The advantage of waiting several hours before writing up game recaps is that you get to see what everyone else was saying about what happened. Box score stats surprised me in a lot of ways…because post-game coverage from Saturday’s nightcaps was basically…
*Embiid, Embiid, Embiid, Embiid
*Jokic, Jokic, Jokic, Jokic
Yet, both team side victors won rebounding handily (Knicks by more than 20!). Both victors won scoring on treys by more than the final scoreboard margin. Denver only shot 6 free throws (what?!) and only committed 4 turnovers (double-what?!). Both games were slow as molasses compared to what we had seen through the week and early Saturday. So MUCH MORE INTERESTING than everybody copying everybody else’s one-dimensional coverage.
New York (-4.5) 111, Philadelphia 104
2-point Pct: Philadelphia 52%, New York 36%
3-pointers: Philadelphia 12/35, New York 16/35
Free Throws: Philadelphia 20/22, New York 23/28
Rebounds: Philadelphia 33, New York 55
Turnovers: Philadelphia 11, New York 11
Estimated Pace: 92 possessions
What jumps out? What doesn’t?! Let’s start at the bottom and work our way up. Super-slow game. Most of what we’d seen the past week ended up around 100 possessions. Miami/Philadelphia crawled to 95…with a lot of late possessions in the scoring flurry. This was the slowest 48 minutes of the playoffs to date. Princeton basketball to the degree you can do that with a 24-second clock.
Rebounds…New York grabbed 23 offensive rebounds, which was enough to cancel out the poor two-point shooting. Obviously one of the side effects of Embiid’s health issues is that opponents have a much bigger margin for error on missed shots. Knicks took full advantage of that. As we’ve said (and showed) a lot in basketball coverage, rebounding is huge in “playoff-style” basketball when every possession is so important.
Treys…New York was +12 points on treys in a game it only won by seven points. Same number of attempts. New York NEEDED to hit 46% on treys AND grab a zillion offensive rebounds to cover this number. Casts some doubt about long term hopes in the Eastern brackets. Would suggest Philadelphia is the better team by a few points when Embiid is healthy. And, might actually suggest the Sixers would still have a chance to compete in this series if Embiid CAN’T play much moving forward. New York’s going to regress a bit from these particular extremes.
Saw a few tweets about Embiid having a plus/minus of +14 in the 37 minutes he played, which meant that the Sixers were -21 in the 11 minutes he didn’t. That overstates his impact. I mean, the Sixers wouldn’t lose by 80 if he had to sit out a game. But…he’s definitely an impact player. Philly has to find a way to rebound better while he lacks explosiveness and has to play in a self-protective way.