Moose on the Loose: Knicks-76ers meet in playoffs
NEW YORK (PIX11) — We now know who the New York Knicks will be facing in the opening round of the NBA playoffs. It will be Joel Embiid and the Philadelphia 76ers.
The series gets going Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. I don’t care that 76ers backup center Paul Reed would rather play New York than Boston. That is not bulletin board material; that is the truth.
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This is the 10th playoff meeting since 1989. The Knicks won three out of the four games against Philadelphia this season. Embiid missed three of those games.
For the Knicks, it was an unbelievable regular season as they won 50 games and finished with the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference. Now comes the proving ground: the NBA playoffs. This is when you define the season in its totality.
Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson has been fantastic, averaging a tad under 29 points per game. He is part of the Villanova trio with Josh Hart and Donte DiVincenzo that has really defined the second-half surge with injuries to OG Anunoby and Julius Randle.
Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau has done a fantastic job coaching this team this season and he knows better than anyone else that it is the playoffs that will define him ultimately.
This series has everything you want, including two great sports cities whose fan bases hate one another, star power in Embiid and Brunson, and pressure on both franchises to win.
For the Knicks, let’s make this clear. There are no moral victories when it comes to the playoffs. You need to win this series, or this year was a failure. See you Saturday night.
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