76ers preparing for physical first-round series with Knicks: ‘It’s time to go there and fight’
The Knicks and 76ers met four times in the regular season, but they’ll now face each other in their first-round series, starting this Saturday.
While the Knicks came out of their regular season series with three wins, the experience of those matchups has stayed with the 76ers. After their 105-104 win against the Miami Heat on Wednesday in a Play-In game, when asked about the Knicks, there was a common descriptor for New York's team: physical.
“They’re tough. They start at the head of the snake with Jalen Brunson. We have to find ways to slow him down,” Tyrese Maxey said after the game. “They are an extremely grimy team. They play hard, they’re physical, they’re tough, that’s their identity. If we want to get Ws and win this series we have to not just match that but overcome that, be better than that and be extremely physical. I think we know what we have to do.
“They kicked our tail in the regular season. It’s time to go there and fight.”
Nicolas Batum, who scored 20 points off the bench on Wednesday, echoed his teammates' sentiments about the Knicks' domination over them in the regular season.
"They got our number this year," Batum said. "They came in twice in this place and pretty much kicked our butt twice."
The first game came on Jan. 5 with the Knicks going into Philadelphia and winning by a score of 128-92. They’d return to Philadelphia on Feb. 22 to win 110-96 before the 76ers went into Madison Square Garden on March 10 to win an ugly 79-73 game.
Finally, the Knicks would get the last laugh and beat the 76ers at The Garden two days later by a score of 106-79.
The Knicks outscored the 76ers 417-346 in their four meetings.
"I think they’re for real. I think they’re really good. They’re fast, they can shoot, can hit the glass, can guard you. I think they've earned that seed,” 76ers head coach Nick Nurse said. “They've played really well and beaten a lot of good teams, so we'll have our work to do here in the next couple of days to get ready for them."
The Knicks won their final game of the regular season to capture the No. 2 seed after the Milwaukee Bucks fell in their regular season finale. But it’s a testament to how consistent this New York team has been that they grabbed such a high seed.
Will it pay off this year?
Well, this season's first-round series will be the first time these two teams have met in the playoffs since the 1988-89 season. In that series, New York swept. With how physical this series will likely be, it'll be surprising if it ends the same way.
