Sixers-Knicks: Preview and Predictions
The Heat victory-lapping is over, and it's time to face what's coming next for the Sixers. MOC has you covered.
After their thrilling play-in win against the Heat, the Sixers now have the matchup they wanted. They will be playing a Knicks team that Vegas has them favored against, and they get to avoid the Celtics until potentially the Conference Finals.
Depending on which half of the game you want to focus more on, you might have walked away from that win feeling triumphant and confident, or you might not be able to shake those oh so familiar feelings of a Sixers playoff disaster that the first half stirred up.
Honestly, I would understand if you felt a little bit of both. But now, it’s time to shift the focus away from that win and towards a similar, but not identical style of opponent. Let’s get into a few key predictions about how I think the series will unfold, before giving my prediction for the outcome at the very end.
The Sixers will wind up starting Tyrese Maxey, Kelly Oubre Jr., Nico Batum, Tobias Harris, and Joel Embiid
I’m a big Kyle Lowry fan and I think he should play 30+ minutes per game in this series, but this particular matchup calls for Kelly Oubre to be in the starting lineup, without question. If the series doesn’t start out with this as the Sixers’ starting lineup, I would bet that Nick Nurse’s hand will be forced into switching to it at some point.
The reason being that the Knicks are an absolutely elite rebounding team, in large part because of their wings, and the Sixers will need all the size and athleticism they can muster up in order to counter that. On the season, the Knicks rank first in the league in offensive rebounding percentage, and the Sixers rank 25th in the league in defensive rebounding percentage. The Knicks also rank 3rd in defensive rebounding percentage, whereas the Sixers rank 12th in offensive rebounding percentage.
What’s most incredible about the Knicks’ rebounding output is that they are elite on both ends without the traditional trade-offs that come with crashing the offensive glass. Generally, teams that are great at offensive rebounding are poor at transition defense, for obvious reasons. The Knicks, however, are not; they allow the 7th lowest frequency of transition opportunities in the league, at the 10th lowest efficiency.
The tl;dr of why that is: The Knicks are an incredible offensive rebounding team not because they are making a schematic trade-off, but simply because they have incredible personnel. It’s not as if the Sixers can simply live with the Knicks’ offensive boards because it means they can crush them back in the form of transition offense; they absolutely have to match their size, physicality, and effort – and the way to do that is by starting Oubre, Batum, and Harris together.
None of those three guys are elite rebounders, of course, but having them all together is a formidable match for the Knicks’ physicality on the wing. Losing Lowry’s IQ and playmaking will sting a bit offensively, but the payoff of having three big wings on the floor at the same time will be well worth it.
But here’s the thing: one of the biggest reasons for the Knicks’ offensive rebounding prowess is Josh Hart – he is likely the best rebounding guard in the league. And that brings us to the next key dynamic for this series.
Josh Hart’s hesitancy from 3 will become a central storyline in the series
Against a team that relies so heavily on one player to create offense, the Sixers are naturally going to be looking for weak spots where they can help off of in order to safely funnel the Knicks’ offense away from Brunson.
The Knicks are a good 3-point shooting team overall, but there are two hesitant shooters that get major minutes on the wing: Hart and Precious Achiuwa. In their hideous win over the Knicks last month, a major factor in the Sixers’ ability to hold New York to just 73 points was their plan to help off of Hart and Achiuwa, as highlighted by the Ricky’s Dan Olinger.
On the season, the Knicks’ 3rd most used 5-man lineup is Brunson, Divincenzo, Hart, Achiuwa, and Hartenstein. I would imagine that they will limit the amount of time that Hart and Achiuwa share the floor, but whenever they do, expect Nick Nurse to break out the hyper-aggressive gap help against Brunson’s drives, like we saw in last month’s game.
Expect Hart’s 3-point trigger to become a key talking point in this series; he has all the makings of a player whose slow trigger and iffy accuracy from 3 makes him go from passable in the regular season to a glaring liability in the playoffs – think P.J. Tucker at times throughout the Celtics series. Hart regularly passes up open looks even in low-stakes situations. On the season, he has taken just 3.2 3s per game and has made just 31 percent of them. I promise you, he does not want to shoot the basketball.
There aren’t many other weak spots for the Knicks in terms of shooting, though Anunoby’s 3-point attempt frequency is down considerably from his Toronto days, which may speak to the state of his elbow injury. That will be something to monitor throughout the series.
Still, despite having ample shooting on the wing, the Knicks simply do not have enough shot creation outside of Brunson. Players like Divincenzo, Anunoby, and Deuce McBride are very good shooters, but lack the ability to beat a set defense consistently throughout a 7-game series. As long as the Sixers are smart about the ways in which they get the ball out of Brunson’s hands (meaning well-timed and executed doubles and blitzes), and are quick and efficient in their recoveries to the Knicks’ shooting threats, this team simply cannot keep up in the half court; they don’t have enough firepower.
It feels crude to simplify an entire playoff series to this one statement, but without Julius Randle (out for the season with a shoulder injury), the Knicks only have one guy. Ultimately, while I have the same concerns about the Sixers that I would heading into any playoff series, I just don’t think the Knicks have the appropriate amount of shot creation to beat a team with Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey. The Sixers need to play the appropriate lineups and give the necessary effort so as to not get crushed in the possession battle, but as long as they do that, the series is theirs for the taking.
Also: it’s important to note that the Sixers have done quite well in limiting that one guy in their matchups with the Knicks this season – Brunson averaged just 22.8 points on 40.3 percent shooting in four games against the Sixers this year.
The Knicks will not try to copy the Heat’s zone
I don’t have any access to the paid subscription sites that would tell me exactly how often the Knicks played zone defense this year, but our friend Derek Bodner tweeted earlier that the Knicks played less zone all season than Miami did in the second quarter last night. So, it’s not all that likely that we see it in this series. Zone has never been Tom Thibodeau’s thing.
While it’s possible that Thibs watched the play-in and is now going to implement it from time to time, I just don’t see him as the type to be seduced into becoming an early adopter of a hot new strategy. He’s going to stick with his tried and true methods.
For Tyrese Maxey, the key X-factor in this series will be how he handles the Knicks’ pick and roll coverages. Unlike Miami, he won’t see a lot of doubles, but he will see a consistent diet of soft hedges with aggressive help off of weak side shooters. Expect the pull-up 3 to be off-limits for Maxey, and for the Knicks to beg him to throw the skip pass to the corner and bet on their defenders to recover.
With less zone and fewer ball denials, expect the Embiid-Maxey two-man game to make more of an appearance than it did against Miami. Embiid will be able to operate as a hub of the offense at the top of the key and Maxey will run circles around him for hand-offs.
The big key for Maxey – and the area where he fell way short against Miami – will be in a decision-making context. The Knicks’ relatively aggressive schemes mixed with elite personnel will force him to make lots of difficult snap-second decisions between pull-ups, floaters, and skip passes after turning the corner on pick and rolls. How he handles that will in large part decide the series.
The other key thing for Maxey to exploit will be mismatches against bigs whenever he bails out of pick and rolls in favor of an ISO. Mitchell Robinson, Isaiah Hartenstein, and Precious Achiuwa are all above-average at handling switches onto guards, but Maxey should cook them over and over again; it is not like going up against Bam Adebayo, who Maxey never dared to even attack throughout the play-in game.
All in all, I think this matchup will be far more comfortable for Maxey. I was very disappointed with how he handled Miami’s defense – his inability to make the types of long-distance passes that would have carved up Miami’s hyper-aggressive defenses was very concerning – but the Knicks are a bit more predictable. Facing off against Thibodeau, who is equally as much of a psycho but less of a mad scientist than Erik Spoelstra, will be an easier decision-making burden for Maxey.
As far as the big fella goes, the Knicks were not all that active in terms of sending double teams throughout their matchups in the regular season, but they did tend to be ultra-aggressive in the gaps.
As shown in the second half against Miami, the key to combating this coverage is simple: make quick, accurate passes to your outlets, and make sure the role players are ready to shoot. If Anunoby is providing this level of help off of Maxey on an Embiid post-up, that should result in quick-trigger 3s all game long. The Sixers absolutely cannot overcomplicate things and experience the types of brain farts that they did in the first half against Miami. Make the simple pass, take the open shots, and make the Knicks wonder if they would be better off guarding Embiid one-on-one. The Sixers can win this series with an 80% healthy Embiid as long as he is dialed in from a decision making perspective.
As to whether or not Embiid reaches that 80% mark, I can only say that he was clearly not there against Miami – I would guess closer to 60% – but I do trust that as he plays himself into shape he will get there by around the midway point of this series.
FINAL PREDICTION
When I first started thinking about this matchup as it became a possibility throughout the final weeks of the regular season, I thought of it as pretty much a coin flip. I was – and am – a bit scared of the Knicks’ physicality, toughness, and athleticism. And, of course, I have a ton of respect for Brunson.
But ultimately, I’ve changed my mind to thinking the Sixers should be slightly favored, for two reasons: 1) I think the Sixers are capable of matching the Knicks’ physicality and withstanding the onslaught they bring on the boards. 2) The Knicks only have one guy. It’s not that simple, but it kind of is that simple, especially when that guy is six feet tall.
I have confidence that the Nurse’s defensive schemes will grind Brunson to a pulp, and with a couple of iffy shooters on the wing, the Sixers can limit the Knicks’ half court offense far more than the Knicks can limit theirs. I’m not expecting a monster performance from Joel Embiid, but if there’s anything that the second half against Miami proved, it’s that you can beat great defenses even on his off nights just with the attention that he draws. A mentally engaged and willing shooter version of Joel is enormously valuable, even if he’s not nearly 100% healthy. I also believe this to be a better matchup for Maxey, and while I’m not expecting Tobias Harris to do anything special, I think his ability just to bang bodies will be useful against this Knicks team. Sixers in six.
32-8 with Embiid playing. That's 80% winning percentage. So that means Sixers in 5, bitches!!!! #TheYear