Sure, the Knicks just won the fourth game of it. And yes, the NBA schedule claims that they will play the Pacers in the second round. The propaganda machine insists that Game 1 of that series is scheduled for Monday.
But we all know that isn’t true. Everyone who watched three minutes of this Knicks-76ers series understands that somehow, some way, these two teams are destined to play forever, that billions of years from now, they will be in Game 9 to the 682nd power of this first-round series and it will come to an end only because the sun expanded large enough to engulf the Earth.
This was a seven-game series that happened to be only six.
It was a fight the whole way.
As Sixers coach Nick Nurse said leading into the game, “Nothing matters” in this matchup. The Knicks crush the Sixers on the glass, and they somehow lose. The Sixers do the same the next game, and they somehow drop that one.
None of this series made sense. So why should one team winning its fourth game mean it’s over? Somewhere, these two teams have a Game 7 scheduled and they will play it.
There’s only one takeaway the 76ers can take from this series: They have used up one more season of Joel Embiid’s prime and don’t have a playoff series win to show for it. Embiid fouled out after dominating most of the game. Tyrese Maxey had an ugly Game 6 after a heroic Game 5, scoring 17 points and missing 12 of 18 shots. Tobias Harris showed up but you could barely tell; he had zero points and took just two shots in 29 minutes in what might have been his last game with the Sixers.
The Knicks go on to the second round and the Sixers go back to the drawing board. It was a close series — the Knicks ended up outscoring Philadelphia by just one total point over the six games — but it was a loss nonetheless.
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