We Finally Got a Miracle
The Sixers have been waiting a long time for a quadruple-doink-type moment to actually go their way. They may have finally gotten it on Tuesday.
I have never seen a game more over that wasn't.
When the Sixers left Deuce McBride wide open at the free-throw line, serenaded with "DEUUUUUUUUUCE" by the MSG faithful as if it was the Knicks' version of Playing the Song, I made my peace. New York was up six. There were 28 seconds to go. It was donezo. Time to see if there were any tickets left to the Thursday night showing of Challengers at the local AMC. I swapped sympathies with my mother and I braced my body for the take onslaught to follow. Fire Nick Nurse and Daryl Morey. Banish BBall Paul to the Z League. Sue Tobias Harris and get at least some of that $180 million back. And first and foremost, trade Joel Embiid, the loseriest loser to ever lose. It was gonna be a rough one.
But then in what felt like a split second (and in reality was only about three), Tyrese Maxey had lifted up for a triple, leaned into Mitchell Robinson for the foul, and somehow got both the shot and the whistle. (The refs initially tried to call it a two for some reason, his feet were both solidly behind the line, nice try assholes.) Then some smart late-game defense from the Sixers -- god forbid! -- forced the ball into the hands of Josh Hart, their most unreliable free-throw shooter. He split a pair, and then again it was again Tyrese time. He raced up the court, stopped in Caitlin Clark territory with 10 seconds left and hoisted. My Knicks fan friends were furious that the team didn't guard him more closely from that distance, but honestly, it never occurred to me either that Tyrese would pull up that soon or from that far out. But nonetheless, swish. Tie game. A block from Batum on Jalen Brunson on the other end, and suddenly we were in bonus time. Game not over. Season not over. Joel Embiid era not over.
As you've probably heard by now, the Sixers actually went on to win the game in overtime -- no Confetti Game Part Two here, we actually finished the job this time. And now, we are left to contemplate the Sixers not only getting a They Never Win That Game win, but getting a Nobody Ever Wins That Game win. We are left, after seven years of fairly consistent postseason misery, to reckon with finally being blessed with an absolute playoff miracle.
Of course, the truest miracle happened four years ago. That was when Mike Muscala hit what is still the greatest shot in Process history for the Oklahoma City Thunder, winning the game for OKC, knocking them to the 21st pick of the 2020 draft, and therefore shipping their top 20-protected pick to Philadelphia, where Daryl Morey made the most important move of his Sixers tenure by selecting one Tyrese Kendrid Maxey. Since then, Maxey has been an unprecedented joy for us, bounding up the ladder from rookie sensation to playoff surprise to fan favorite to rising star to actual All-Star to Most Improved Player over the course of four regular seasons and three playoffs. It's not an exaggeration to say that his mere existence has already saved The Process at least once, since without his All-Star leap after the James Harden disaster last summer, Embiid would likely have already given up by now on this team ever giving him the help that he needs to get past the second round.
But Maxey has also been human, and young, and prone to the kind of developmental speed bumps that usually obstruct a brilliant player in his early 20s on the way to true greatness. One such bump happened in Game Four, when with the Sixers in position to win the game in the second half and Embiid clearly running on emptier than Jackson Browne, Maxey hesitated and faltered, hot potatoing the ball and deferring to his superstar teammate and their underpowered supporting cast when really he had to grab the game by the balls and keep on attacking no matter what, like his Knicks counterpart Jalen Brunson did for New York in their win. It was a teaching moment for the young star, albeit a poorly timed one, and you figured he'd learn from the experience and reap the rewards from it in postseason runs to come.
I must admit I did not expect his growth to manifest in his very next game. But Maxey was electric in this one for the first 47 and a half minutes too, attacking relentlessly, bombing remorselessly, even hitting a mid-ranger here or there. Finally, belatedly, the Sixers stopped trying to force the offense through Embiid late and started using him just as a decoy, set-up man and screener for Maxey, who'd scored nine points in the fourth and 32 total before his Reggie Miller moment at the end of regulation. And even in overtime, he never stopped attacking, scoring seven points in the extra period and ending the game with a playoff career high 30 shots in a playoff career high 52 minutes. He out-Brunsoned Brunson, on his home court, in front of Tracy Morgan and Ben Stiller and 20,000 uncharacteristically quiet Knicks fans. It was a first true signature playoff moment in a career that's no doubt gonna be chock full of 'em before long.
But it was a moment that the Sixers simply have never gotten before. We've had some incredible and unlikely playoff wins over the years -- both of the James Harden-powered victories against the Celtics last year certainly qualify, as does the Joel Embiid game three game-winner against Toronto in 2022 and the Mike Scott cash-out shot against the Nets in 2019. But do any of those qualify as true acts of God, as real NO FUCKING WAY DID THAT JUST FUCKING HAPPEN victories? I wouldn't say so. Not like the Kawhi quadruple-doink series-winner for Toronto in 2019, or the Hawks' comeback from 26 down in the second half of Game Five in 2021, or the Knicks' Game Two escape job while down six in the final minute earlier in this very series. On Tuesday we finally got one for our side, and it may have been even wilder than any of the ones that have gone against us over the years. (Well OK, not the quadruple-doink, that one went against the friggin' laws of physics.)
And by the way, it is stunning the difference one miraculous playoff W makes, not just in a potential series result, but in our perceptions of everyone involved with it. After spending most of the fourth quarter wondering how I was going to spend the rest of the week defending the indefensible with Embiid -- and whether it was even worth still trying at this point -- an incredible thing happened: I tweeted something after the OT about him not having a good game, and Sixers fans came diving out of their office and dorm room windows to tell me what a Good Game He Had Actually. Oh, the rebounding, and the late-game defense, and the assists, and him making big plays and smartly deferring to Maxey in the fourth quarter and overtime. He had a triple double after all, finished the game +14!
I just had to laugh. They weren't really wrong about any of it, of course, but if Josh Hart hits both of those free throws, anyone who brought up ANY of that stuff when discussing Embiid's performance on the night would've been a sap, a sucker, an apologist, drowned in a sea of crying-laughing-emoji tears. Embiid would've been getting roasted, flambéed and fricasseed for weeks across every media institution known to man if the Sixers had lost.But now, Embiid's nine turnovers? His 19 points on 19 shots? His fourth-quarter disappearing act? All just part of winning basketball, baby. It's incredible to see the swings of these things in real time, and how different-colored a brush everything gets painted with the final picture is of a win and not a loss.
I don't know what it means for the rest of the series. I really don't. I have no idea what to make of Joel Embiid's Game 5 disaster class, a game where he delivered close to the exact opposite of what I begged from him yesterday. I don't know if that game was just a stinker due to physical and mental issues that could in theory be better by Game Six, or if he's simply spent from how grueling this series has been and how fucked up his body has gotten -- with the fact that the Sixers can't seem to survive a minute without him on the floor certainly not helping anything. You'll take your chances back in Philly with a reeling Knicks team that's just taken a serious blow to its seeming indomitability, but the home crowd hasn't felt much like home so far this series, and I can't even begin to predict what it'll be like on Thursday. The Sixers are still in imminent peril in this series, and the odds will almost certainly favor the Knicks closing it out in one of the two final games. If the Sixers laid a hard-boiled egg at home in Game Six -- or battled all the way back from 3-1 down just to drop Game Seven in New York -- would anyone be surprised, least of all us? Of course not.
But man, is this an all-time Sixers victory regardless of whatever else happens in the series. I haven't done the research or the math on it, but it is possible that no team has ever been as close to winning an NBA playoff series without actually closing the door on it than the Knicks were on Tuesday night. Their locker room was probably already calling in the Keens Steakhouse order for the post-game victory celebration. For the Sixers -- the Sixers, of all teams!! -- to send them home in a daze on the LIRR, trying to figure out what the hell just happened... it's simply a forever moment in Philly sports history. And then you realize that we should get to watch Tyrese Maxey do this for the whole next decade, as he keeps getting better and better and clutcher and clutcher, until a series like this where he averages 33 and 7 and makes the biggest shots of the decade simply qualifies as "early-career Tyrese." It's enough to make you actually feel lucky to be a Sixers fan.
And, well, if you do want to believe that this still could be The Year -- I never totally gave up, but I won't act like I didn't falter in my faith there for a bit -- you could really say that it takes a Miracle like this to finally shift the karmic balances for a team like the Sixers. At the risk of going full Bill Simmons, after full generations of losing being a gravitational force with your franchise, you maybe do have to have that Dave Roberts moment to finally break totally free from the curses of old. The Sixers had never gotten one of those before, but they certainly got one on Tuesday night -- one that still sorta feels like it happened to another team, in a different series, in a totally separate universe. And now they have the chance to rewrite everything in these playoffs, to redeem the seemingly unredeemable, to save the long-inevitable from ever feeling inevitable again. All they needed was a miracle. Now it's up to them in Games Six and hopefully Seven to not let it go to waste.
Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.
Andrew's writing is brought to you by Kinetic Skateboarding! Not only the Ricky's approved skate shop, but the best place to get Chucks, Vans, any apparel. Use code "DAVESILVER" for 9.1% off your order.
I am once again asking for your intro music! Great stuff as always!
Nice story, Andrew. Well done.