Tyrese Maxey saves Sixers’ season with miracle performance in 112-106 Game 5 overtime win

NEW YORK — Joel Embiid dove for the loose ball. Nick Nurse called timeout. And a crowd at Madison Square Garden that has spent so much of this first-round playoff series in a frenzy quietly began to file for the exits.

Then, Tyrese Maxey stepped to the free-throw line, calmly capping an epic 46-point, nine-assist, season-saving effort.

The 76ers’ All-Star guard had already provided the end-of-regulation heroics. He scored seven points in 25.1 seconds to push the Sixers to overtime, where they survived, 112-106, to force a Game 6 on Thursday at the Wells Fargo Center.

» READ MORE: Tyrese Maxey, new Sixers alpha, would not let them lose Game 5 in New York despite Joel Embiid’s struggles

“I don’t think we played great,” Nurse said after the game. “I think all it was, was guts. We hung in there.”

The Sixers seized control in overtime for good when Kelly Oubre Jr. got free under the basket for an inside finish to put his team up, 108-106, with 1 minute, 2 seconds to play. After Jalen Brunson threw the ball out of bounds, Tobias Harris all but sealed the victory with two free throws before Maxey’s final trip to the line.

That came after another unfathomable finish to regulation in this building, when Maxey converted a four-point play and buried a logo three-pointer seconds later to erase what was a six-point deficit and force the extra five minutes.

Before that, the Knicks held the advantage for nearly the final seven minutes of regulation. A Miles McBride jumper put them up, 96-90, with 28.2 seconds to play — and The Garden looked primed to celebrate its first playoff series clinch at home since 1999.

Maxey’s miracle made up for a night when Embiid was not his dominant self, after entering Tuesday’s game listed as questionable to play with left knee injury recovery, and then missing the team’s morning shootaround with a migraine headache possibly stemming from his ongoing mild case of Bell’s palsy. Though he finished with a triple-double (19 points, 16 rebounds, and 10 assists), he went 7-of-19 from the floor and committed nine turnovers.

» READ MORE: Sixers-Knicks: Tyrese Maxey spearheads Game 5 overtime win at the Garden

But like Sunday’s Game 4, Embiid played nearly the entire second half, save for a 72-second breather with about 7 minutes left in the fourth quarter. That’s because the Sixers again faltered during the brief minutes when the NBA’s reigning Most Valuable Player was off the floor. After the Sixers led, 26-17, at the end of the first quarter, the Knicks staged a 22-5 run punctuated by a Mitchell Robinson one-handed alley-oop slam and a jumper by Brunson to seize a 39-31 advantage.

Then the Sixers made their own push out of the break, with an old-fashioned three-point play by Embiid giving them a 58-56 lead about midway through the third quarter. The teams essentially traded leads for the rest of the quarter, setting up the contested final frame.

Brunson, the MVP candidate and former Villanova star, finished with 40 points and six assists before that final costly turnover. Fellow former Villanova standout Josh Hart added 18 points, nine rebounds, and four assists to continue his impactful series.