He was a one-eyed, one-legged, palsied Knickerbocker beater: Joel Embiid inspired the Sixers

You know the tune, just change the words:

He’s a one-eyed, one-legged, palsied Knickerbocker beater.

Joel Embiid’s playoff career-high 50 points and five three-pointers weren’t his biggest contribution in Thursday’s must-win Game 3 triumph, 125-114, over the visiting New York Knicks. Despite his left eye, dry and blurry from a bout with Bell’s palsy, his left knee sore from surgery two months ago, it was his toughness, not his touch, that turned what could have been a 3-0 deficit into a 2-1 momentum swing.

After Game 2, Embiid vowed the Sixers would win the series, even though, historically, NBA teams in a 2-0 hole in seven-game series have come back just 7% of the time. Embiid was focused, even if his left eye sometimes couldn’t.

“His voice, and his presence tonight, was the biggest thing,” said Tyrese Maxey. “I know he had 50 — I just said that like it was nothing — but his voice, his presence, his passion, was huge tonight. He didn’t let us get pushed around.”

» READ MORE: Joel Embiid battling mild case of Bell’s palsy on left side of his face: ‘I’m not going to quit’

When you last you saw these Sixers, they were whining about being bullied by an undermanned, under-talented Knicks club whose best player was stinking up Manhattan like a garbage strike. They stomped their feet, held their breath, and threatened to tell the principal that the hall monitors were being mean to them. They lost two playoff games because they didn’t want to win them badly enough.

Then, during their two days off, they looked themselves in the mirror, reminded themselves that they had the most gifted player on the planet, and decided to deliver some ‘Philly tough’ basketball. They committed two flagrant fouls, Embiid committed two offensive fouls, and suddenly the gritty Knicks weren’t so gritty any more.

Kyle Lowry, North Philly raised, Catholic League bred, and Villanova polished, set a tone less than midway through the first quarter. Donte DiVincenzo was on his way to the hoop. Lowry smacked him in the head. Flagrant foul. No apologies. Little protest. What’s done was done.

» READ MORE: Joel Embiid was everything in Game 3: Maddening, marvelous, savior of a series

Just 22 seconds later, Embiid casually kneed Isaiah Hartenstein in the groin for an offensive foul. Just over 2 minutes after that, Embiid undercut Mitchell Robinson’s legs as Robinson landed. Embiid was assessed a flagrant foul; the Knicks wanted him ejected with a Flagrant-2; the officials declined. They were not the smartest plays, but again, the message was sent, Embiid said:

“They want physicality? We can be physical, too.”

“It was dirty,” DiVincenzo said of Embiid’s cheap shot.

A fellow Villanova product raised in nearby Delaware, DiVincenzo did not complain about Lowry’s head shot: “That’s playoff basketball.”

It’s not, really. Both fouls were unnecessarily violent, and Embiid’s was downright evil, and he knew it, as he tried to excuse it by comparing it to an incident in which he was fallen on.

“I kinda had flashbacks,” he said, disingenuously. “I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. I just had to protect myself.”

Robinson was not injured on that play, though he did leave the game later after another collision. It was that kind of night. The kind of night on which Embiid thrives.

So does Knicks star Jalen Brunson, who entered the game shooting 29.1% from the field. He went 13-for-27 on Thursday and scored 39 points, two shy of his playoff best, with 13 assists, his playoff high by two. Of course, Brunson is a Chicago kid who won two NCAA titles at Villanova and plays in New York. He’s tougher than Geno’s cheesesteaks, more talented than Jay Wright’s tailor, and creates more contact than a lap dancer on audition.

This is the sort of basketball the Knicks play — down-and-dirty, bump-and-grind — and this is the sort of basketball the whiny Sixers had to adopt.

In Game 1, the Knicks corralled 23 offensive rebounds. In Game 2, a late-game scramble in which two fouls were not called on the Knicks led the Sixers to threaten to file a protest with the NBA over the officials — a humiliating complaint from a team whose town produced the likes of Lowry, Marcus Morris, and Rasheed Wallace, and whose Sixers won their latest title on the back of Moses Malone, a biblically tough NBA legend.

“Game 1, they just pushed us around,” Maxey said. “Game 2, down the stretch they did that.”

In Game 3, they did the pushing … led by their one-eyed, one-legged, palsied Knickerbocker beater.

Sure looked good to me.