Sixers legs don't make trip as Knicks romp in series opener

NEW YORK — Joel Embiid said during the past playoff series against the Boston Celtics that his mind was telling his body that he felt amazing.

His mind should have spoken to him and his teammates before the second-round series opener against the New York Knicks on Monday, because the Sixers looked like a team that had finished a grueling series just two days prior as they stumbled through a 137-98 loss. Game 2 will be on Wednesday night, again at Madison Square Garden.

Jalen Brunson took full advantage of what appeared to be many heavy legs as he scored 27 points in the first half when the Knicks built a 23-point lead and never really had to look back to see if the Sixers were closing in. Brunson finished the night with 35 points on 12-of-18 shooting in his 30 minutes..

Paul George led the Sixers with 17 points, and hit four of his six threes. Embiid added 14 on 3-for-11 shooting, Tyrese Maxey had 13 and Kelly Oubre Jr. and VJ Edgecombe each posted 12. None of them played more than 29 minutes as Nick Nurse began emptying his bench midway through the third quarter.

If the first quarter was any indication of how the rest of the series may play out, it's going to be a long and ugly one. Long as in how much time it took to play the first quarter. How long this series goes is yet to be determined as recent history for the Sixers shows that getting blown out in the first game isn't an indicator about how things may play out.

The Knicks led 33-25 after one in a quarter that saw Nurse try a myriad of things to jump start his team, which looked like they were playing in sand less than 48 hours after beating Boston in Game 7. Nurse had not one, not two, but three of his players try to cover Brunson, and there was little success. The Villanova product made six of his first nine shots in the quarter, controlled the tempo, found open teammates and basically ruled the game in collecting 14 points. 

The Sixers coach also tried a little bit of zone and even implored Justin Edwards to purposely foul Knicks backup center Mitchell Robinson, a 41 percent free throw shooter during the regular season. That worked, as Robinson missed all four of his attempts. Little else did for the Sixers on this night.

Brunson scored 11 points in the final 1:37 of the first half, the last a three-point dagger from the right of the top of the key with 0.3 seconds remaining to give the Knicks a 74-51 lead at the break. That gave him 27 points, and the Knicks shot 29-for-44 from the field (65.9 percent) compared to just 16-for-40 (40 percent) for the Sixers.

"He's a great player, a great scorer, a great clutch player," said Nurse of Brunson. "The biggest thing is you really want to try to make him work for his buckets. That's kind of always where we start. The next thing we start thinking about throwing different matchups at them so they just don't get the same look, and each guy is gonna guard and give a little different look. 

"And then the last thing is you start coming up with schemes. What are you doing? How much help are you providing, where's it coming from, are you double-teaming. How are we playing pick-and-rolls, how are we playing off-ball? It's kind of a long process. He's going to make buckets but you just hope they're contested. And if he makes them, God bless him."

He was certainly blessed. And now the Sixers will have a day to recoup, re-plan, re-scheme and rest as they'll try to figure out a way to limit Brunson's domination.

It was a bit surprising the Sixers kept themselves somewhat in the game early, as Maxey and Embiid were a combined 2-for-10 from the floor when Maxey deposited his first basket with 6:57 to go in the second. But the competitiveness certainly didn't last too long.

"A lot of people, when they look at this, they see seven versus three (seeds) and they automatically assume (a series win for New York)," said Knicks coach Mike Brown. 

"When that combination was on the floor together (Embiid, Maxey, Paul George) they won almost 65 percent of their games. They were on pace to be a 60-win team. And if you're on pace to be a 60-win team, that's better than us, record-wise. And they're completely healthy. It's going to be a tough series. Not only that, Nick's a good coach, he's a championship coach, been through a lot of ups, a lot of downs. He was willing to throw anything out there — boxing ones, triangle and two. It's going to be a hard series for us."

It can't get any easier than it was on Monday.

"I just want to keep playing, I want the team to keep playing," said Nurse. "I want to get some more weeks in here. I think we're really improving and I just want to keep doing that. We have to keep playing games and the only way to keep playing games is to win that (next) one."

We'll find that out on Wednesday.