76ers-Knicks: Series keys, schedule and prediction for Round 2 heavyweight fight

Posted on by GoalVerseNews

The Eastern Conference’s No. 3 seed, the New York Knicks, will take on the seventh-seeded Philadelphia 76ers in the second round of the 2026 NBA playoffs. These two teams last squared off in the postseason in the first round just two years ago — an absolute war of a series that included:

Whew. If that was what these two teams put together in Round 1, what the hell kind of encore are they going to offer with a spot in the Eastern Conference finals on the line?

Schedule| Odds | Knicks breakdown | 76ers breakdown
Head-to-head| Matchup to watch | Key question| Prediction

Game 1: Mon., May 4 at New York (8 p.m., NBC/Peacock)
Game 2: Wed., May 6 at New York (7 p.m., ESPN)
Game 3: Fri., May 8 at Philadelphia (7 p.m., Prime Video)
Game 4: Sun., May 10 at Philadelphia (3:30 p.m., ABC)
*Game 5: Tue., May 12 at New York (TBD)
*Game 6: Fri., May 15 at Philadelphia (TBD)
*Game 7: Sun., May 17 at New York (TBD)

*if necessary

New York Knicks (-260)
Philadelphia 76ers (+215)

That they’re capable of hitting a higher gear than any Knicks team in more than half a century.

It wasn’t exactly breaking news that these Knicks were very good. They returned the core of last year’s Eastern Conference finals squad, and added quality complementary bench pieces in Jordan Clarkson and Jose Alvarado. They won 53 games — 54, if you count the NBA Cup final.

They had the NBA’s fifth-best net rating, and were one of just four teams to finish in the top seven in both offensive and defensive efficiency. The other three? The defending champion Thunder, the 62-win Spurs, and a Celtics team that many tabbed as the favorites to come out of the East … right up until they weren’t.

New York wasn’t living up to that lofty regular-season profile through three games against the Hawks, though, winding up on the business end of a pair of CJ McCollum game-winners and facing a 2-1 deficit heading into Game 4 in Atlanta. What the Knicks produced over the next three games, though — most notably, of course, in their historic evisceration of the Hawks in Game 6 — provided an emphatic proof of concept for just how devastating this iteration of the team could be, and a renewed sense of hope for just how much it might be able to achieve.

Running through All-Star center Karl-Anthony Towns as a playmaking hub, the New York offense exploded, scoring a scalding 1.38 points per possession on 55.1% shooting as a team over the final three games of Round 1. Perimeter defenders Josh Hart, OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges smothered the Atlanta trio of McCollum, Jalen Johnson and Nickeil Alexander-Walker, while Towns, Anunoby and Mitchell Robinson swatted shots at the rim, helping hold the Hawks under 100 points in all three contests.

The Knicks moved the ball and their bodies, dominated the boards and scored at the rim, wiped out transition opportunities, and forced turnovers on defense while avoiding them on offense, all culminating in one of the most dominant performances in NBA playoff history. That was championship-level play. Replicating it against tougher competition deeper into spring won’t be easy, but reaching it is no longer purely theoretical. Now, the Knicks know they can do it. And now, so does everyone else.

That they’re capable of reaching a pretty damn high level, too.

Philly was supposed to be drawing dead against a Boston team that had won 56 games while working All-NBA First Teamer Jayson Tatum back into the fold following his stunningly speedy return from a ruptured Achilles tendon. Without Embiid, who was recovering after undergoing an emergency appendectomy in the final week of the regular season, the 76ers just didn’t figure to have enough top-end talent or depth to beat the favored Celtics four times in seven games.

After taking Game 2 and home-court advantage behind killer performances from Maxey and rookie VJ Edgecombe, though, the Sixers had some life, some juice, a spark, a chance. And, as it turned out, they’d soon have something much more important than that:

It didn’t happen immediately. In Embiid’s Game 4 return, he struggled to get up to speed and to cover ground against the Celtics’ offense, as Philadelphia lost his 34 minutes by 25 points to fall into the 3-1 hole that, historically, has swallowed 96% of the teams that enter it.

Starting somewhere around halftime of Game 5, though, a 76ers team that we’d rarely seen at something approximating full strength thanks to varying injuries and absences started to look like exactly the kind of force that Daryl Morey had set out to construct with his cap space plan after that 2024 loss to New York. Across two regular seasons, Embiid, Maxey and Paul George had played just 742 total minutes together, outscoring opponents by 37 points in that span; Philly’s Big Three was a plus-27 against Boston alone.

Embiid dominated the Celtics’ frontcourt to the tune of 28 points, 9 rebounds, 7 assists and just 2 turnovers per game. Maxey repeatedly torched whatever coverage Joe Mazzulla tried to throw at him, averaging just under 27 points and seven assists per game on 46/42/96 shooting splits. George was a picture-perfect two-way complement, pairing fantastic defense on Jaylen Brown and Tatum with timely shot-making and secondary facilitation. Edgecombe, Kelly Oubre Jr. and Quentin Grimes all defended and attacked with energy. It all just … clicked.

Suddenly, all the injuries and suspensions and fits and false starts don’t matter. Suddenly, what’s left is what was promised, or at least hoped for: a team led by three All-NBA-level pieces who fit together, with a championship-caliber head coach, an electric rookie who’s beyond-his-years enough to demand to turn an opponent’s water off in a Game 7, and a defense that can hold the NBA’s No. 2 regular-season offense to barely one point per possession over three straight closeout games.

And with one longtime franchise dragon now slain, suddenly all that stands between the Sixers and the conference finals — a place that Embiid, now a decade deep, has still never been — is the last team that sent Philly home for the summer in the playoffs.

The two teams split the season series, 2-2.

Philly took the first matchup back in December, 116-107, behind a combined 53 points and 13 assists from Maxey and Edgecombe:

The Sixers earned their second win of the season at MSG a few weeks later, scoring a 130-119 victory over a Knicks team in the midst of its post-NBA Cup swoon. Maxey, Edgecombe and Embiid combined for 88 points on 53 field goal attempts as Philly shot 54% from the field and scored nearly 1.3 points per possession for the game — one of New York’s worst defensive performances of the season:

The Knicks returned serve in late January, coming away with a 112-109 win in Philadelphia behind 31 points from Brunson, and holding off a late Sixers comeback with a pair of bang-bang non-calls going New York’s way:

New York evened up the season series in its final game before the All-Star break, dominating the Sixers from nearly the opening tip in a 138-89 blowout — the Knicks’ third-most-lopsided victory of the season — in what became the first breakout performance in a Knick uniform for Alvarado following his trade from New Orleans:

Your standard “injuries impacted these matchups” caveats apply. For Philly, Embiid, Oubre and Andre Drummond each missed two of the games, with Embiid and George both missing the February blowout; for New York, Deuce McBride and Landry Shamet each missed two, while Hart and Anunoby each missed one.

Hart, for the record, thinks we shouldn’t take too much away from four games that happened between 2.5 and five months ago …

… though that could be the “I shot 32% from the field against these guys in those games, so let’s not remember them” talking.

Who guards the centers?

For the most part during the regular season, Nick Nurse guarded Towns straight up, with whichever centers he had available that night (Embiid, Drummond, Adem Bona) absorbing the bulk of the matchup. We just saw Towns incinerate Atlanta’s centers — in keeping with the season-long trend for New York that we discussed multiple times heading into and early in that series — to the point where Quin Snyder eventually slid Dyson Daniels over to Towns, opening the door for Brunson to get going in a major way in Game 5, before the dam completely burst in Game 6.

I wouldn’t expect the Philly defense that smothered the C’s to get carved up like the Hawks did at the end of Round 1. (Frankly, I wouldn’t expect anyone to get carved up like that the rest of the way. Woof.) But if Embiid’s mobility remains limited — he appeared to bang up that troublesome left knee in Game 7, though it’s a right hip contusion that appears on his “probable” injury designation for Game 1 — the prospect of Brunson and Towns putting him in action to generate pick-and-pop 3s he can’t contest and footraces with Brunson that he can’t win could lead Nurse to lean into cross-matching, too, sticking George or whichever other power forward the Sixers are playing on KAT while Embiid sags off Anunoby or Hart to play more of a roving rim protection role.

(Oubre might spend some time matched up with Towns, but I’d expect Nurse to lean more toward giving him a healthy share of the Brunson matchup after Philly’s size and length helped give Brunson problems through the first few games of the 2024 series. Edgecombe will get the primary responsibility, though, after doing about as good a job on Brunson as anybody in the league did during the regular season.)

When the Sixers flip that switch, New York’s forwards will need to be prepared to exploit the ghost coverage by working as an on- and off-ball screener to get teammates free, by making plays in the pocket when they’re gifted a 4-on-3 in the pick-and-roll, and by knocking down the open 3s they get against the scheme. While Anunoby’s scorching hot coming off a sensational offensive series against Atlanta, Hart’s performance in that regard bears watching. Back in 2024, Hart shot 31% from 3 in the regular season before going 16-for-37 (43.2%) against Philadelphia in the playoff matchup. This season, Hart shot 41.3% from 3 in the regular season, but made just five of his 23 triple tries (21.7%) in the win over Atlanta. Whether Hart skews closer to 20% or 40% could be a massive bellwether over the next couple of weeks.

On the other side, for the most part, the Knicks have played him straight up, with Towns and Robinson going toe-to-toe with the former MVP. Both have their fair share of history with Embiid …

… and both will need to stay disciplined against Embiid, who’s perennially among the league leaders in free throw attempts and who drew eight personal fouls a game against the Celtics — second-most in Round 1 among players who played more than one game, behind only Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Foul trouble for Towns would throw sand in the gears of an offense that’s been functioning really smoothly; foul trouble for Robinson would mitigate some of New York’s rebounding advantages, and possibly mean more minutes for lightly used reserve big Ariel Hukporti, whom Philly could target aggressively.

One wrinkle to keep an eye on: How early, and how often, does Mike Brown shift Anunoby onto Embiid? He’s guarded the big fella in stretches here and there over the years; sliding him over into the matchup makes it more difficult for Philly to go to the Embiid-Maxey pick-and-roll, since OG can comfortably switch that, and might entice the Sixers to try to play more through Embiid in the post, where Brown can dial up some doubles and aggressive help to try to flummox him into some turnovers (which, in fairness, he very patiently and studiously avoided against Boston).

I’m also curious about whether, and how much, Brown goes double-big against Philly. While he played Towns and Robinson together for just 14 total minutes against Atlanta, preferring to split his bigs against the smaller and quicker Hawks, the tandem played nearly twice as many minutes against the Sixers during the regular season. If Brown feels comfortable with Towns guarding Philly’s 4s — and against anyone but George, he very well might — then going double-big could help New York tilt the possession battle against a Sixers team that finished in the bottom five in defensive rebounding rate during the regular season (though they were much better at finishing possessions over those final three games against Boston).

Can the Knicks slow down Tyrese Maxey — like, at all?

After a monster regular season that should earn him his first All-NBA selection, Maxey was brilliant against Boston, using his combination of speed, pull-up shooting and advancing playmaking acumen to fluster whichever primary defender Joe Mazzulla sent at him and scuttle whatever scheme the Celtics tried to deploy in the pick-and-roll. He was fantastic against New York in the 2024 matchup, averaging just under 30 points and seven assists per game on 48/40/89 shooting; he was similarly excellent against the Knicks in the regular season, scoring 30 a night on 51/50/82 splits. He is a problem, and he’s one the Knicks will have to try to solve collectively.

Who will Brown start on Maxey? Will it be Mikal Bridges, who’s fresh off a strong defensive series against Alexander-Walker but can sometimes struggle navigating screens at the point of attack in the pick-and-roll? Or will he go with Hart, whose shift onto McCollum midway through Round 1 helped clip the Hawks’ wings, but who would be at a foot-speed disadvantage trying to track Maxey all over the floor?

In either alignment, how effectively can New York limit Maxey’s ability to target Brunson (who will likely be guarding Oubre, the closest thing to a hiding spot in Philly’s starting five) in action? And how quickly can Maxey download Brown’s schematic approach to protecting Brunson (high hedge and recover? straight-up switch?) and diagnose the right way to dice it up?

When Brown goes to his bench, New York’s reserve corps features several quality options: McBride, Alvarado, the currently-out-of-the-rotation Shamet. Whichever one he taps — and all of them, plus Clarkson, very well could get at least a piece of the job — will need to stay on the gas to stick with the speedy Maxey and make him work hard for every inch, hoping that the cumulative effect can sap some of the late-game effectiveness of what was one of the league’s premier fourth-quarter and crunch-time players during the regular season.

If the Knicks can find a way collectively to limit Maxey’s explosions — and avoid getting beat by a hail of Edgecombe catch-and-shoot 3s out of blitzes in the process — their chances of advancing increase dramatically. If they can’t, though, Philly’s got more than a puncher’s chance to pull the upset.

A great deal of this, obviously, depends on how well Embiid can hold up on those wounded wheels with just one day between rounds and only one day between games for the bulk of Round 2; if he looks significantly hampered at the start of the series, the odds of a shorter series increase. But as dangerous as Maxey, George and a mostly healthy Embiid are, I think the Knicks are the better, deeper, more balanced, more rested team, and I’ve seen them take games in Philly. It’s another absolute war, but New York advances to the conference finals for the second straight spring.

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