Comedian Jon Stewart sat courtside at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night to watch Game 5 between his beloved New York Knicks and the Philadelphia 76ers.
He cheered on as the Knicks built a substantial lead in the game’s final minute. New York, up by six points, was just 25 seconds away from advancing to the Eastern Conference semifinals.
And then 76ers star Tyrese Maxey took over. Maxey outscored the Knicks 7–1 by himself in the final 25 seconds, forcing Game 5 to go to overtime, where the 76ers outlasted New York and won 112–106. There will be a Game 6 in Philadelphia.
Right before overtime, TNT cameras followed Maxey to the 76ers’ bench after his heroic effort to save his team’s season. But as the broadcast lauded Maxey, cameras captured Stewart looking rather stunned as the 76ers guard strolled past him. The comedian quickly became a meme.
Stewart chimed in about the viral moment on social media.
Like all Knicks fans, Stewart will have to wait until Thursday for New York’s next chance to close out the first-round series. If they do, it will mark the Knicks’ third series win since 2000.
The NBA’s Last Two Minute report from Game 1 of the series between the New York Knicks and Indiana Pacers is going to be a doozy.
The Knicks won the game, 121–117, behind another explosive scoring night from Jalen Brunson, who had 43 points to become the first player since Michael Jordan to score at least 40 points in four straight playoff games. But the Knicks also benefited significantly from several questionable officiating decisions down the stretch in a tight game.
The most crucial and most controversial was the offensive foul call on Pacers center Myles Turner with 12.1 seconds left. The play came immediately after a Knicks turnover gave Indiana new life, with New York leading 118–117 and the Pacers able to hold the ball for the last shot. Tyrese Haliburton brought the ball across halfcourt, guarded by Donte DiVincenzo. Turner came up to set a screen on DiVincenzo and DiVincenzo crumpled to the floor as if he’d been stuck by a cattle prod. Turner was whistled for a moving screen, giving the ball back to the Knicks and effectively ending any hopes of a Pacers comeback. (The Pacers challenged the call but it was upheld on review.)
NO WAY!!! Refs called this an offensive foul on the Pacers. Pacers challenge the call but how is this called with 12 seconds left? #INDvsNYKpic.twitter.com/jlx9DYkyeE
Were Turner’s feet still moving when he set the screen? Sure. Slightly. By the letter of the law, it’s a foul. But it’s a marginal call at best, and not the type of foul that usually gets called at that stage in a playoff game.
“I think it’s best when the players decide the outcome of the game,” Turner said after the game. “I think it’s unfortunate that it happened. We reviewed it; they still called it an illegal screen. But it’s the playoffs, man. I feel like DiVincenzo did a good job of selling it. For the most part you can’t leave the game to be decided by the refs. So we have to take accountability as well. Of course it’s right after the game, I’m a little fresh in my emotions about it, but we know, at the end of the day, we can’t get to that position.
“The Last Two Minute report, we’re all looking forward to that coming out. I think there was two controversial calls. We had to use our challenge on one call on Tyrese [Haliburton]. And then the kickball by Aaron Nesmith that was not a kickball—you can clearly see it on the replay.”
While the moving screen call is debatable, there’s no doubt that Turner is right about the missed call on Nesmith. With 52 seconds left to play and the score tied at 115, Brunson tried to sneak a pass to DiVincenzo in transition. Nesmith deflected the pass, but the officials ruled that he did so with his foot, which is illegal, and the Knicks retained possession. In fact, video shows that Nesmith clearly deflected the pass with his hand, but the call was not reviewable.
The refs called this a kick ball… THE REFS CALLED THIS A KICK BALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/ew7zOP8lE7
The blown call denied the Pacers a fastbreak opportunity in the final minute of a tied game. Instead, immediately after the Knicks got the ball back, DiVincenzo hit a dagger three. Crew chief Zach Zarba told a pool reporter after the game that the call was incorrect.
The bad calls weren’t the only reason the Pacers lost. One other reason was that Haliburton made several questionable decisions in the final minutes (he had three turnovers in the last four minutes of the game). But when playing against a quality opponent in a raucous road environment, it’s next to impossible to win when you also have to overcome uneven officiating.
The other game on Monday night was equally interesting, but not equally competitive. In Game 2 of their series, the Minnesota Timberwolves eviscerated the Denver Nuggets, 106–80, to take a 2–0 lead in the series.
The result was notable for a few reasons. First of all, Minnesota was playing without center Rudy Gobert, who was away from the team awaiting the birth of his first child. Even without Gobert, the favorite to win his fourth Defensive Player of the Year award, the Timberwolves’ defense still held Denver to its fewest points since Game 7 of the 2020 first round against the Jazz (an 80–78 win for the Nuggets).
The loss also marked just the second time during the Nikola Jokić era that the Nuggets lost back-to-back home playoff games. The only other time was when the Phoenix Suns finished off a four-game sweep in Denver in the 2021 second round. The Nuggets were nearly unbeatable at home during their championship run last season, losing just one game in Denver (Game 2 of the NBA Finals against the Miami Heat). But the T-Wolves are just that good. Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns were excellent again in Game 2, combining for 54 points on just 32 shots. It’ll be an uphill battle for the Nuggets to come back and win the series after squandering home-court advantage so dramatically.
Murray (top) looked completely frustrated during Denver’s Game 2 loss to Minnesota.
The chaos began with 28.9 seconds remaining in regulation down six, 96-90. Maxey hit a three on the wing and was fouled by Knicks center Mitchell Robinson. Maxey made the free throw to cut the Knicks' lead to two.
On the ensuing possession, 76ers wing Nic Batum fouled Knicks guard Josh Hart, who made only one of his two free throws. With the Knicks now up three with 15.1 seconds to go, Maxey came sprinting up the court and took a deep three from the logo at the top of the key to tie the game. After blowing the six-point lead, the Knicks would go on to lose in overtime 112-106.
TNT NBA analyst Charles Barkley was shocked that the Knicks didn't foul Maxey and send him to the line after Hart made the free throw to go up by three. The Knicks had no fouls to give, so Maxey would have been at the line shooting two free throws with his team down by three.
"It's interesting, Ernie," Barkley began as he spoke to Ernie Johnson and the rest of the Inside the NBA panel. "I've [said] on the show all these years that I'd foul 100% of the time, 100% of the time. It's just a bonehead play in my opinion. I want the lead and the ball. The two most important things in the basketball game: the lead and the ball, because these guys are so good. It happened in the Milwaukee and Indiana game last week with Khris Middleton. It's a mistake. But like I say, some coaches don't foul, some coaches always foul. I'm gonna always foul a guy in that situation. You can see on coach Thibodeau's face those guys screwed that up."
“I foul 100% of the time [in that situation]. It’s just a bonehead play in my opinion. I want the lead and the ball — the two most important things in a basketball game.”
One point. That’s all there was to separate the New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers after a thrilling six-game series that ended with New York’s series-clinching victory Thursday night. The Knicks scored 650 points in the series. The Sixers scored 649.
This series had everything. It had spectacular individual performances, like Joel Embiid’s 50-point game, Tyrese Maxey’s 46 and Jalen Brunson’s four straight games with at least 39 points. (The last player to score 39 in four straight playoff games? Michael Jordan.) It had electrifying finishes, like Maxey’s clutch shot-making in Game 5. It had local animosity as the two nearby rivals met in the postseason for the first time in 35 years and Knicks fans invaded Philadelphia.
Game 6 might have been the best of the series. When the Knicks jumped out to a 33–11 lead in the first quarter, they seemed poised to cruise to victory. But then the Sixers came storming back and, after 17 second-quarter points by Buddy Hield, took a 54–51 lead into halftime. Hield was the most unlikely of heroes. He hadn’t played in either of the previous two games after scoring just two points in limited action in the first three games of the series. He knocked down five of his seven three-point attempts in the quarter and out-scored the entire Knicks team by himself.
Hield’s incendiary quarter made it a new game, and by the middle of the third quarter the Sixers managed to stretch their lead to 10. But the Knicks didn’t blink and with a 22–12 run over the final six minutes of the third were able to tie the game at 83. That led to a back-and-forth fourth quarter that featured four ties and three lead changes.
To borrow a word from Knicks announcer Walt Frazier, Brunson was the catalyst in the fourth. He had 14 points in the quarter, twice as many as any other Knicks player, and scored or assisted on eight of the team’s 13 made field goals. It was just the latest in a series of superstar performances from Brunson, who has cemented himself this season among the game’s elite players. He finished the game with 41 points on 13-of-27 shooting and also added 12 assists.
But the beauty of this Knicks team is that, while Brunson undeniably leads the way, they have a solid backbone of role players who are equally crucial to their success. In Game 6 it was Brunson’s former Villanova teammates Josh Hart and Donte DiVincenzo. Hart had 16 points, 14 rebounds and seven assists, and DiVincenzo had 23 points, seven assists, three blocks and two steals. DiVincenzo played all 48 minutes of the game and was tasked with being the primary defender on Maxey. After Maxey torched the Knicks for 46 points in Game 5, he managed just 17 on 6-of-18 shooting Thursday.
The Sixers posed a more difficult challenge for the Knicks than a 7-seed usually does for a 2-seed. That’s because Philadelphia was forced to play without Embiid for much of the season and thus its record did not accurately reflect the quality of the team when at full strength, which it was in the postseason after Embiid (although hobbled at times by his knee injury) was able to return. Either of these two teams could have reasonably expected to reach at least the conference finals, so it’s a shame that one of them had to be sent packing so early. No matter which team won the series, it would have been crushing for the loser to exit in the first round. But the quality of both teams made for one of the best first-round series in recent memory.
