Instant observations: Knicks blow out Sixers in Game 1 stinkbomb

A lot of my bigger gripes started on the other end of the floor. For the opening quarter of the game, it was the Joel Embiid show on offense, the Sixers constantly dumping the ball to him on the left block at the cost of a more diverse offense. While the big man was able to bait both of New York’s primary big men into early foul trouble, forcing some tough decisions for Mike Brown, the Sixers spent a lot of time playing through him in static offense that got no one else involved. Four men standing around the perimeter, one guy establishing and re-establishing himself inside the paint, and not a lot of good possessions to speak of. And that approach, dear reader, meant Jalen Brunson got to spend a lot of the first quarter just hanging out on defense, saving his energy to go down and attack on the other end. Whether it was Quentin Grimes, Kelly Oubre, or another ineffective Sixers role player, Brunson spent a lot of time standing in the corner and resting.

And by the way, Embiid wasn’t really good at anything on offense aside from drawing those fouls, making the approach even more puzzling. He was slow to react in four-on-threes when the Knicks trapped Maxey and unable to generate much leverage in the post. His face-up game has been pretty suspect since coming back in the middle of the Boston series, and this is an opponent where his ability to draw their bigs out is a lot more essential to their win condition. I get that they were forced to suit up tonight only two days after finishing the previous series, but trying to carry a stylistic choice over from a completely different matchup was an unforced error. Embiid wasn’t part of the solution on the other end, certainly, playing too deep against Towns’ pick-and-pops.

It did not help their offense that Tyrese Maxey seemed completely uninterested in hunting his own offense in the first quarter, passing out of probably four or five different scoring opportunities to recycle the possession back to the perimeter. I suspect it was at least partially deliberate, with Maxey trying to get others going before eventually kicking into takeover mode. But it led to the Sixers squandering opportunities by turning a decent look for Maxey into a similar-quality look for worse role players. And even when an unselfish Maxey play created a good opportunity, the Sixers managed to squander several cheapies at the rim and open threes from all over the floor.

With Philadelphia’s offense sputtering, the Knicks played with good pace off misses, scoring some easy ones in transition and attacking a Sixers team that was not especially dialed in off-ball. The Sixers didn’t communicate well or move off-ball, leading to some downright comical sequences where Knicks players broke out of flex cuts and found themselves wide open in the paint. Paul George stood rooted on the floor on a play where VJ Edgecombe got stuck on a screen, leading to a post-bucket aftermath where VJ, PG, and Kelly Oubre all turned in circles, incredulous at who was supposed to rotate and when. Even when guys played hard, they played with no game sense, as you saw when VJ Edgecombe went clattering into Jalen Brunson on a loose ball to pick up his third foul of the first half.

Eventually, that play from the first quarter became an epidemic. The Sixers were poor at passing off switches, poor at fighting over screens, poor at communication, poor all over the floor. The Knicks shot the cover off the ball from three, where I did think the Sixers at least tried to get a hand up, but inside the arc was an absolute bloodbath. After three quarters of action, the Knicks were shooting 67.7 percent from the field and over 73 percent on twos, a total indictment of Philadelphia’s defensive process. They will have to figure out a better Plan A than they offered on Monday, because deep drop and pray the Knicks miss shots is not going to cut it.

By the time the Sixers began to bring Brunson up to screen for Maxey in an effort to change the terms of the game, they were down double-digits and absolutely drowning, and it felt too late to try to pour water on the raging fire. Considering how essential that should have been to any game plan, I don’t get how this was their starting point. Use VJ Edgecombe as your on-ball attacker, bring Oubre over as a screener, do whatever you have to do to make sure Brunson has a real task in front of him on defense.

There really isn’t a whole lot more to analyze from this game. They got punched in the mouth and didn’t respond. On to Game 2.

Other notes

— Quentin Grimes feels a lot more essential in this series than he did in the Boston affair, and boy, he played an absolute stinkbomb against the Knicks in Game 1. Brunson absolutely abused him for a few minutes late in the second quarter, with Grimes completely unable to chase him around screens or find the timing to slide with Brunson inside the arc. He also gambled at the wrong times, lurching forward into nothing but dead space, allowing Brunson to explode toward the basket and collapse the floor.

— While I am a believer in expanding the rotation for this series, the Sixers’ bench mob performance for the final 2.5 quarters drives home that they don’t exactly have a murderer’s row of talent after the top eight. Adem Bona came in and committed five fouls in less than four minutes. Trendon Watford got the ball ripped from him by Jordan Clarkson, a long-running target for offenses everywhere, and then missed a four-footer while guarded by Landry Shamet in the paint.

I would probably rather watch that than what we got during the last semi-meaningful stretch of the game, which led to three or four straight possessions that were funneled toward Andre Drummond in the corners. When he opted to try to back his man down from the three-point line, it took every bit of professionalism I had not to close the laptop and move on from this game entirely.