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A brutal third quarter, combined with a Tony Brothers refereeing disasterclass in the final minute, led to a 112-109 Sixers loss to the Knicks on Saturday evening, leaving the Sixers inches shy of a 3-0 start against New York this season. Joel Embiid led the way for Philly with 38-11-5 against the visitors.
Here’s what I saw.
What the hell happened at halftime?
Let’s start with the good news. Embiid is driving to the basket with force, rebounding better, and leveraging mismatches like a guy with full confidence in his body. The skill never left him, so it feels like everything is beginning to come together and potentially change the ceiling of this team.
The video speaks for itself:
https://t.co/0RxXgrzLau pic.twitter.com/I4NiQcLXMZ
— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) January 24, 2026
Karl-Anthony Towns came into this game nursing back spasms, with Towns only confirmed as a participant 30 minutes before tip-off. And he certainly looked like a man who could have used a day off while guarding his longtime rival, with Embiid just teeing off on him in space and around the basket. Towns did well enough to stand his ground and force a few possessions to drag on, but Embiid would ultimately hit a jumper over him or draw the foul from the block, leaving Towns sitting on the sideline with three fouls at the end of the first half. Mitchell Robinson did a bit better when he could be used as a help defender, blocking Embiid on a couple of attempts at the rim, but he was powerless in space, easily baited into fouling Embiid thanks to deft pump fakes from Philly’s star center.
The part that has become tougher for opposing bigs is that Embiid is now a legitimate threat to drive again. Embiid went downhill at the Knicks repeatedly during his first half run of destruction, and when teams have to prepare for him hitting the lane with speed, it sets up his face-up game and clears space for the midrange. He hit a couple of mean Euro steps into reverse layups in Saturday’s first half, gliding around bodies in traffic and putting serious spin to get the shot to drop.
Joel Embiid has 28 points in the 1st half if he plays like this he’s the best player un the league pic.twitter.com/n9FLE0xRJA
— Artoftheleague 🖌️ (@artoftheleague) January 24, 2026
On the other side of the controls was Tyrese Maxey, who had a relatively subdued 11 points at halftime. But he was executing brilliantly against New York, critical in Embiid’s rampage. The Knicks kept leaving the pocket pass open on those 1/5 ball screens, and Maxey was happy to play setup man as long as the window was there.
I can’t say I am exactly sure what happened to this team’s offense after halftime. An “Embiid dominates everyone” half can occasionally have side effects for the rest of the group, namely that guys lose touches and rhythm as he plays one-on-one basketball in the middle of the floor. But the Sixers came out of halftime and didn’t run much of anything for anyone, defaulting to stagnant isolation looks for several different parties as the Knicks grabbed control of the game.
(One factor that helped: Towns’ behind was glued to the bench, giving the Knicks a tougher and more physical lineup on defense for most of the quarter.)
Even when they tried to get into some of their pet plays, the Sixers were completely disjointed. Embiid misfired on a potential Maxey backcut, with the two usually telepathic teammates losing sight of one another. A Maxey/Embiid handoff up top bounced harmlessly off of Maxey’s hands and onto the sidelines, gifting the Knicks a turnover through very little effort from New York. And with the Sixers playing one of their more impotent offensive quarters of the season, a 13-point effort in the third quarter, the Knicks were able to stretch the Sixers out in early offense, leaving the Sixers scrambling on both closeouts and rebound opportunities.
That brought us to the factor that most Sixers fans dread with the Knicks: offensive rebounding. Even when the Sixers got stops in the third quarter, New York often got two and three chances to score, with Josh Hart, Mitchell Robinson, and even Landry Shamet (of all people!) pulling offensive rebounds down that led to wide-open threes on the reset. Each successive rebound seemed to drain a bit of spirit from the Sixers. After that rip-roaring start, Embiid’s first points of the second half didn’t come until the eight-minute mark of the fourth quarter, an indictment of their offensive process and a prolonged period where many of them struggled to keep their heads on straight.
To their credit, the Sixers battled. Embiid was about the only thing they had going late, with the Sixers forcing a New York chess move from the bench. Justin Edwards was briefly brought in as a threat to foul Mitchell Robinson, who was pulled to avoid shooting free throws down the stretch. Against double-teams in the post, Embiid generated a gaggle of open threes for Philly, who made one last comeback push in the final minutes, coming within three points of the visitors. It looked like OG Anunoby had snuffed out the comeback effort nearly by himself in the closing two minutes, with a huge putback dunk and a big made three, but the Sixers summoned one last gasp with a series of increasingly improbable events. A Maxey made three, a VJ Edgecombe tie-up of Brunson, and what was initially an inbounds foul by Brunson set up a chance to take this to overtime. A review overturning that Brunson foul, converting it to an away-from-the-play foul on Edgecombe, essentially put this game to rest, until another Tony Brothers review gave them the ball with 10 seconds left.
And then….
LOL Tony Brothers
I have no idea what this guy is watching in real-time or on replay, but missing two different deliberate fouls from the Knicks in the final 10 seconds is the cherry on top of his decades-long campaign to turn every basketball game into a showcase for himself. There were three different intentional fouls missed in the span of about 15 game seconds, with Joel Embiid smacking Landry Shamet on replay for another no-call.
Help wanted
After a 34-34 first quarter in which most of the major players contributed, you were left with one negative thought: when is Paul George going to get involved in the game? The answer came immediately to open the second quarter, with George taking the lead against a Knicks group that didn’t have a lot of great options to guard him.
With how New York’s rotations worked, George was handed an opportunity to go head-to-head with Josh Hart, a tough two-way player who is ultimately giving up a decent amount of size to George. So the veteran got to work, canning a baseline jumper, drawing a foul on a trail three, and hitting a pull-up two to open his account in the second period. Unfortunately, that was about the last we heard from George. This was an anonymous outing where he contributed very little to their attempts to win or the box score.
He was far from the only major rotation player to go missing in this one. Quentin Grimes hasn’t been a positive contributor to this team, save for a handful of games, for most of the last month. It doesn’t bode well for Jared McCain that he is so deep in Nurse’s doghouse that he can’t even sniff rotation minutes for this team, with Grimes frequently putting together dopey two-way stretches that hurt them on both ends. I sometimes wonder where his head is at — he threw a hit-ahead pass to Adem Bona late in the third quarter that Bona stared at in bewilderment, standing still until Grimes came back to collect it.
Other notes
— It has been refreshing to see Nick Nurse find time on the bench for Tyrese Maxey, who too often has been asked to play 40+ minutes for the Sixers to have a chance to win a game. As Philadelphia gets healthier, they should be able to scale Maxey’s role back a bit to get the best version of him across 35-ish minutes.)
It’s unclear if they have figured out how to play with that style of rotation, though.
— Relatively quiet game in the box score, but Kelly Oubre’s attitude is an unmistakably important part of this team. The Sixers also leaned on his connection with Embiid in this one, getting into some two-man stuff to punish Jalen Brunson’s defensive ineptitude.
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