Sixers gave everything they had in Game 2 loss to the Knicks, but find themselves in familiar straits

NEW YORK — Two fistfuls of basketball shorts were all that prevented Tyrese Maxey from toppling headfirst onto the court. There were 22 seconds left, and the Sixers star was standing a couple of feet behind the three-point line, his upper torso bent more than perpendicular at the waist, his hands clutching the fabric on his thighs. He’d played 47 of the most grueling minutes of basketball a point guard can play. Reality’s harsh fatigue was settling in.

The hope for the Sixers is that their 108-102 loss in Game 2 against the Knicks wasn’t what it looked like. That we just saw them give every ounce of the best they have. They made more shots than Game 1. They grabbed more rebounds. They got the breadth of individual performances they needed to offset the absence of Joel Embiid. Yet, here they were, heading back home from Madison Square Garden with a two-games-to-none deficit, same as they did two seasons ago.

“It’s going to be like this for the rest of the series,” Maxey said later. “I don’t expect anything less. However long this series is, I feel like every game is going to be like it was tonight.”

» READ MORE: The Sixers missed Joel Embiid, quiet second half from stars, and more from a 108-102 loss in Game 2

There is some good in that omen. Two days after losing Game 1 by nearly 40 points, the Sixers looked a lot like the team we saw a couple of years ago at Madison Square Garden. That is, they looked like a team more than capable of standing its ground in a best-of-seven slugfest against the Knicks. The specter of that 2024 first-round series has loomed from the moment the Sixers knocked off the Celtics in Game 7. It went into the history books as the latest in a long line of disappointments. Live and in person, it looked more like a testament to how arduous and narrow the margins can be in a playoff series. The Sixers were every bit the Knicks equals, except for the bit that matters.

So it was on Wednesday, midway through the fourth quarter with the score tied at 92, that the two likeliest possibilities were diametrically opposed. Either the Sixers were going to set a new tone for the series or they were going to slump to the mat having delivered their best shot. The difference down the stretch is what it usually is in basketball: one team hit the shots, the other didn’t. The Sixers were the latter team.

After the Sixers took a 99-96 lead on a three-pointer by Kelly Oubre Jr. with 6 minutes, 52 seconds remaining, the Knicks scored nine straight points courtesy of all of the usual suspects. A three-pointer by Josh Hart, a couple of mid-ranger jumpers by Jalen Brunson, a step-back jumper by Mikal Bridges. We’ve watched them do these things since they played at Villanova. These moments are the Knicks’ competitive advantage.

“It’s going to be physical, it’s going to be competitive, it’s going to come down to who makes plays at the end of the game,” said Maxey, who was double-teamed all night and finished with a hard-earned 26 points on 9-of-23 shooting.

The reality is that the Knicks have long been adept at walking out of games with bloody noses and black eyes and being able to say, “You should see the other guy.” As impressive as the Sixers were in winning four out of seven against the Celtics, they didn’t lose a game like this. In Game 2 against the Knicks, they held advantages in a lot of the bellwether categories that usually portend victory. They shot 13-of-34 from three-point range while holding the Knicks to a dismal 7-of-26. They grabbed two more offensive rebounds and attempted three more foul shots. They held Brunson to 9-of-21 shooting after allowing him to hit 12-of-18 in Game 1. They had Knicks forward Karl-Anthony Towns in foul trouble, which limited him to 27 minutes.

» READ MORE: The Sixers must rediscover their defensive intensity in order to compete with the red-hot Knicks

There were some parallels to the Sixers’ hard-fought loss to the Celtics in Game 3 last round. But the Celtics shot 43% from three-point range that night.

On Wednesday, the Sixers weren’t perfect. Far from it, even. They finished minus-5 in the turnover margin, including some uncharacteristic sloppy play from Maxey, who tied a season-high with six turnovers. Maxey now has 10 of them in the first two games of the series after finishing the seven-game Celtics series with nine.

They missed a number of shots at the rim, and several open looks from three-point range. They missed seven of their 28 free-throw attempts.

“I think our guys did a really nice job of making the right reads, thought we passed the ball good,” Sixers coach Nick Nurse said. “Thought we had maybe four wide-open shots in a row that didn’t go. We needed to keep the scoreboard moving.”

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But a lot of those things were well within the range of typical operating costs. And they were offset by some low-percentage makes, particularly during an early flurry from Paul George, who scored 11 points in the game’s first five minutes, nine of them on a trio of tough threes.

Maxey played 47 of the game’s 48 minutes. George played 43. How much more do they have to give?

“It’s going to be a dogfight,” said rookie VJ Edgecombe.

The only choice is to keep swinging.