The Sixers must rediscover their defensive intensity in order to compete with the red-hot Knicks

NEW YORK — Nick Nurse immediately identified a string of pick-and-rolls plays in the middle of the floor as a subject of irritation, because the Knicks seemed to score in “pretty much every way they could.”

Three-point shooters left open when a 76ers perimeter defender could not get over the screen. A lob over the top to big man Mitchell Robinson. Jalen Brunson with lethal midrange jumpers, floaters, and attacks all the way to the basket.

“Just too easy,” Nurse said. “It wasn’t challenged.”

In defensive standout Paul George’s words, the Knicks “shot the [expletive] out of it” — 63.1% from the floor, 51% from three-point range, to be exact — in their Game 1 shellacking of the Sixers to begin their second-round playoff series. But the Sixers also did not offer much resistance, after defense helped flip their first-round series against the Boston Celtics into a thrilling upset.

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“It’s not very easy to evaluate any of that stuff,” Nurse said after the game. “I just feel like we were a full step slow [Monday] defensively. We just seemed like we were chasing everything. Didn’t guard the ball well enough. Didn’t contest shooters well enough. They were obviously picking us apart, just moving a lot better than we were.”

How physically the Sixers guarded Boston’s ballhandlers was, in Nurse’s view, the biggest key for their rally from down three-games-to-one to win a dramatic Game 7 on the road. In all three of their consecutive victories, the Sixers allowed 100 points or fewer against a Celtics team with premier shot-makers Jayson Tatum (who missed Game 7 due to injury) and Jaylen Brown, along with a slew of three-point bombers.

Nurse, though, did acknowledge after Game 7 that he believed the Sixers had taken a “half-step back” that night by surrendering “some of the best looks of the series.” Then they only had one day between the end of that grueling series and Game 1 at Madison Square Garden, a rest disadvantage reality that multiple Sixers players did not want to use as an excuse but did acknowledge.

The Knicks, meanwhile, carried over their offensive dominance from an overwhelming Game 6 win last Thursday over the Atlanta Hawks when, at one point, the score was an unfathomable 61-19. Then throughout Monday’s onslaught against the Sixers, George said “the ball was hopping, [and] that carried into them making shots.” New York scored 58 points in the paint and 16 in transition. The Knicks totaled 18 second-chance points off eight offensive rebounds. Six players hit at least two three-pointers.

“It was more of just a mental thing,” said George, whose defense had been lauded throughout the Celtics series. “Once [the Knicks] were moving it, they definitely had a pep in their step. And I think that really gave them the confidence.”

Brunson, naturally, was at the apex of that efficiency. The All-NBA guard and former Villanova star scored 35 points in 31 minutes, by going 12-of-18 from the floor, 3-of-6 from beyond the arc, and 8-of-8 from the free-throw line.

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When asked Tuesday about Brunson’s scoring ability, Sixers wing Kelly Oubre Jr. quipped that, “I just know he has a big head, so it’s definitely tough to guard him with his head doing all that” while mimicking it rocking and bobbing while playing against contact. When pressed on whether he was simply making his latest clever, chuckle-inducing comment or being somewhat serious, Oubre acknowledged “a little bit of both.”

“He’s a very smart, tactical player,” said Oubre, who also regularly guarded Brunson in their 2024 first-round series. “So he uses all that to his advantage. But, hey, I’ll be there. He can whip me [with his braids] all he wants, but he’s not getting free like that.”

That’s why rookie teammate VJ Edgecombe echoed that all defensive improvements must start on the ball. Edgecombe, Oubre, and Quentin Grimes all spent time guarding Brunson early in Monday’s defeat, an attempt to switch up the looks he received.

Edgecombe added it is “super important” to get over high screens, so the Sixers’ big men “don’t run around as much” and allow ballhandlers to get downhill and into midrange space. According to second spectrum, for instance, the Sixers allowed 44 points on 27 pick-and-roll plays with Joel Embiid — whose defensive mobility has become more limited since undergoing multiple knee surgeries — on the back end.

“We just weren’t connected enough,” Embiid said after the game. “Not physical enough. All their guys were just too comfortable.”

That is one reason Nurse lamented that the Knicks seemed to score in every imaginable way on those actions in Game 1. It helped lead to New York, in George’s words, “shooting the [expletive] out of it.”

And in order to make this second-round series more competitive, the Sixers must quickly get back to the defensive identity they found against the Celtics.

“If we lack physicality and effort,” Edgecombe said, “the score’s going to be like that.”