It was the miracle off Broadway.
In a hectic and thrilling span of 14 seconds, the Knicks turned a five-point deficit into a one-point advantage and rode the moment to a 104-101 crazy victory at MSG.
The big shot came from Donte DiVincenzo, whose trey gave the Knicks the lead. But the sequence requires a full accounting:
Playing poorly all evening, Jalen Brunson finally connected on a 3-pointer — his first of the fourth quarter — to cut the lead to 2 with 27 seconds left.
It required a lucky bounce off the rim.
Off the inbounds, the Knicks stripped Tyrese Maxey, who fell to the court.
Josh Hart, a hero of Game 2, picked up the steal.
It led to a quick miss from DiVincenzo, then an offensive rebound from Hartenstein, then the big DiVincenzo trey.
Maxey missed a potential winner for the Sixers on the ensuing possession, and Anunoby iced the win on the foul line to give the Knicks a commanding 2-0 series lead.
Again, the Knicks got away with a bad game from Brunson.
He followed his Game 1 dud with a Game 2 clunker, shooting 8 for 29 overall — leaving him well below 30 percent for the series.
But his teammates picked up the slack, most notably his former Villanova teammates Hart (21 points) and DiVincenzo (19).
The Sixers, meanwhile, got plenty from their stars.
Just not in the final seconds.
Embiid and Maxey were listed as questionable on the injury report before the game.
And both looked fine.
Maxey, who had an illness, went off for 20 points in the opening half, burying 7 of 11 shots.
He took over toward the end of the fourth quarter, outdueling Brunson and finishing with 35 points and 10 assists.
Embiid, who has been touch-and-go in his recovery from knee surgery, added 16 points with 10 boards in the first two quarters.
He ended the evening with 34 and 11.
For the first half, the Knicks were saved by Hart’s heroics.
Normally the grunt-work contributor, the forward had 19 of the team’s 49 points at halftime.
The Knicks trailed at the break but continued to chip away.
They finally took the lead late in the third quarter, setting up the thrilling finish.
“We dominated the glass in the first game, so they’re going to come with a different approach and probably emphasize the transition points and the advantage we have on the boards,” Bojan Bogdanovic said. “So it’s going to be a game, a really great battle. It’s probably going to be a nasty game but it’s what it is.”
“Nasty” would’ve been an overstatement but there were a couple firework moments. With 5:23 left in the second quarter, Embiid was called for a technical for shoving DiVincenzo while holding the ball.
It set off chants of ‘F–k Embiid’ from the MSG crowd, which the Sixers center welcomed with head nods.
It woke up the crowd but the Knicks couldn’t immediately capitalize, calling a timeout soon thereafter because of a Tobias Harris trey.
DiVincenzo came alive with 19 points, and the biggest shot in years at MSG.
He was confident a breakthrough was going to happen.
“My mindset is that my confidence is at an all-time high,” DiVincenzo said before the game. “I’m ready to go tonight and I’m going to shoot the ones I feel comfortable with and confident in and live with the results.”
“A series doesn’t really start until after the first game because everybody wants to get that first game under their belt. Adjustments are made. They obviously know they want to play a little more physical. We outrebounded them [in Game 1], so we expect them to be physical and attack the glass. Everything that we beat them at categories we beat them in we expect them to do that harder. The mindset is just be ready and play the same way but turn it up a notch.”
