Good morning. Let’s basketball.

The theory of this season for the Philadelphia 76ers as soon as James Harden went on tour calling Daryl Morey a liar was that Tyrese Maxey was ready to be Joel Embiid’s undisputed co-star while Morey either found a Harden trade that helped the Sixers land a third star (now or soon) or while Harden licked his wounds before heroically deciding to do his job.

The truth is that Maxey was actually ready last year, but Harden’s presence and Maxey’s patience allowed them all to co-exist rather fruitfully, to the point that had Embiid been healthy in the playoffs, they might have all gotten further than ever before.

Maxey did what many expected Maxey to do this season, which is reach All-Star status and convert believers all over the country. He not just made All-Star, but won the Most Improved Player award, too. He is a spectacular young player wrapping up his rookie deal, preparing to get paid lots of money.

Strike that: preparing to get paid all of the money. He cemented himself in Sixers lore on Tuesday night with an epic, season-saving performance in Madison Square Garden, punctuated with a three to send it to overtime.

Let’s start, though, with Maxey’s 4-point play with the Sixers down six with less than 30 seconds to go. (Yes, down six with less than 30 seconds to go. In other words, game over. Not tonight.)

The Knicks were up six with 30 seconds left, didn’t commit any turnovers, burned some clock and lost … because of a bad foul on a three, a missed free throw and THIS DUDE. Unreal stuff.

That capped off a 46-point, 9-assist night for Maxey facing elimination, a real step-up performance under immense pressure in a defense-first series. The Knicks sold out to limit Joel Embiid (we’ll get to him) but still threw bodies at Maxey. He just found the seams and exploited them.

For what it’s worth, Jalen Brunson has also found the seams in a Philadelphia defense geared up to limit him. Brunson’s got one of those thread ripper hooks, and he’s going to town. Forty points of his own for the Knicks.

This was a deeply tense series … and that was before the overtime elimination game. Sheesh. They should be giving out complimentary IV bags instead of t-shirts.

Maxey and Brunson. The future of the Eastern Conference point guard is bright.

A Defense of Embiid

By the box score, this was not Joel Embiid’s best night: 19 points on 7/19 shooting, 16 rebounds (5 offensive), 10 assists, 4 blocks, 1 steal, a whopping 9 turnovers, all in 48 minutes. It has felt since the hype of Embiid’s 50-point Game 3 was (rightfully) overshadowed by his nasty business in that same game that the worm is turning on Embiid and he’s reaching the zone of skepticism in the NBA discourse.

And yet, the Sixers continue to be dead in the Delaware River any time Embiid steps off the floor, and the Sixers continue to win when Embiid is on the floor. The Sixers were +14 in Embiid’s 48 minutes and -8 in the scant five minutes he sat. The Big Fella sat for two stretches in Game 5: the four minutes on the first-second quarter cusp (the Sixers were up 22-17 when he left and tied at 28 when he returned) and a 1-minute breather in the middle of the fourth (the Sixers went from down three to down six).

This follows a pattern from the entire series — the Sixers win minutes Embiid plays and get killed whenever he sits — and has led to some extreme minutes, even by Nick Nurse standards, for a player who missed months of the season and seems to wear down by every postseason anyway. The Sixers won Embiid’s minutes because Maxey went off and the Knicks, outside of Brunson, did not. A big change from prior games: New York didn’t dominate the glass in Game 5 — in fact, Embiid only had one fewer offensive rebound (five) than the whole Knicks team (six).

All I’m saying is that while Embiid is making mistakes and is generally flustered at times during the series and isn’t scoring at his usual rate or smoothness, and while he did make some plainly dirty plays earlier in the series and has made some dangerously lazy plays too (including a flagrant on Brunson late in Game 5) … despite all of that, he is the biggest reason Philadelphia made the playoffs (8-0 once he returned to give them life in the regular season) and is the biggest reason the Sixers haven’t been Cancun’d by the TNT crew. Maxey is, of course, 1b. Kelly Oubre is playing his face off. Nicolas Batum is playing like his feet are on fire. Kyle Lowry is a perfect fit for this series. Tobias Harris did some basketball things in Game 5. But it’s Embiid. It’s always Embiid. For (almost always) better or (occassionally) worse, it’s Embiid.

Put some respect on the fact that he’s a) playing through injury, b) playing unreasonable minutes, and c) present on the court every time the Sixers take a lead in this series.

Scores

Sixers 112, Knicks 106 [OT] (NYK leads 3-2) — Subplots in this series:

• Donte DiVincenzo and Josh Hart have gone cold from deep. It changes things dramatically for the New York offense.

• Tom Thibodeau avoided the no-center minutes in Game 5 despite O.G. Anunoby’s successful defense on Embiid in Game 4 (there was one no-center minute in regulation for New York: the minute Embiid sat in the fourth).

• Buddy Hield’s agent needs a box of Kleenex.

Magic 103, Cavaliers 104 (CLE leads 3-2) — You know what? This series isn’t as consistently tense as Sixers-Knicks — we’ve had a couple of blowouts — and neither of these teams are 2023-24 threats to the crown, so the stakes feel lower (even though the internal stakes for Cleveland are enormous). But this series is good in a weird way. This endgame sequence is pretty wild … in a weird way.

Donovan Mitchell goes about 5-7 seconds too early with the lead and in isolation against a defender he can get a shot off on. The Magic elect to run it up without a transition advantage and leave the timeout on the table. Franz Wagner (3/10 from the floor at that point) gets Max Straus guarding him … and gets a screen from Paolo Banchero to get … Evan Mobley switched onto him. Huh! Franz drives left — never even thinking about hitting the brakes and kicking it back to a now-open Banchero (who had 37 in the game at that point and was cooking in the fourth) — and gets his shoulders past Mobley … but then tries to sneak it in off glass with his right hand, and Mobley recovers (the length!) for the block. Just a bunch of interesting decisions capped off with an incredible athletic play.

This series can still go any which way from here. Nothing is off the table.

Pacers 92, Bucks 115 (IND leads 3-2) — Instead of calling the Pacers unserious or deeply overrated or undisciplined or raw, I’m going to salute the Urgent Care Milwaukee Bucks for dropping a big ol’ diss track on Indiana in Game 5. The Bucks came out of halftime looking for blood, and found it.

Khris Middleton has been incredible in this series. He’s just carrying so much weight, and carrying it well. And look at Doc Rivers dusting off 2024 Danilo Gallinari and getting 20 excellent minutes out of him.

There was a moment when Tyrese Haliburton had Gallo switched onto him. Early season Hali would have cooked this into a deep stepback three. Current Hali … got off the ball. Haliburton is either still quite limited, or he’s not up for this moment quite yet. I’m sure it’ll come. But the Pacers are not cooked. Maybe “raw” was the right descriptor here.

The Bucks are not raw, and haven’t been in a minute. This is what experience does, I suppose, to some degree. Middleton has seen everything over the past five or six years. Brook Lopez and Bobby Portis Jr., too. Patrick Beverley has seen a lot, been involved in a lot. All that experience helps ease the younger Bucks into the game, even though Rivers is being extra judicious with their minutes.

I can’t believe I picked Pacers in four. What a fool.

It sounds like there’s a slight possibility Giannis and Dame could be back for Game 6. That’s what I’m taking from Doc saying they are “very, very, very close.” That’s a lot of veries. (Verys? Vereux? Verii?) Indiana might just have played around too long.

Rap Talk With Tom Ziller

Remember down the stretch of this season when the Raptors had traded away their second and third best players and were tanking to keep their draft pick and had good players missing games for legitimate reasons, and also had a fringe player betting against himself on gambling apps.

That Raptors team had some wild losses. On March 20, they lost to the Kings by 34. A week later on March 27, they lost to the Knicks by 44. A week after that, they lost to the Wolves by 48.

Guess it’s contagious up there in Toronto.

West Coast forever.

Schedule

Most importantly, we have some dates for Timberwolves vs. Nuggets: Saturday, Monday, Friday (what a long break!), Sunday for the first four games. No times yet, but the only team getting the most high-visibility weekend slots over this series will be the Knicks, I’m guessing.

Also importantly: we will not have a night off late in the first round. In fact, it seems like we’ll likely have at least two games each day until second round series start wrapping up.

Here’s the Wednesday slate. All times Eastern.

Heat at Celtics, 7:30, TNT (BOS leads 3-1) — No more injuries is the goal for Boston. Which means ending this series now.

Mavericks at Clippers, 10, TNT (Series tied 2-2) — This is like Sixers-Knicks except with one of the teams starting out with a big lead and hanging on for dear life. No Kawhi in Game 5. I assume he’s done for the series.

Links

Dan Devine from the Garden on Tyrese Maxey’s savior performance.

I haven’t had time to write about the media rights chatter over the past week, but there’s a lot going on that will completely change how most fans experience the game. The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reported on Friday that Amazon and Disney have frameworks in place to be two of the NBA’s primary media partners for the next decade. It appears Disney will maintain the NBA Finals, but that Amazon will pick up a major portion of content. It now appears that there is one slot remaining for a major partner: either Warner Bros. Discovery (which owns TNT, NBA TV, Bleacher Report and more) or Comcast/NBC. And it sounds like Comcast/NBC is really coming to the table. Everyone is focused on “Roundball Rock” and the golden age of ‘90s basketball on NBC, of course. All I know is that I am cherishing every moment spent with the Inside the NBA crew — even the moments that make me cringe and grind my teeth — because even if those folks follow the league to new partners, that show will never be the same.

Here’s Ethan Strauss on desperation driving the media companies to bid high for something that doesn’t seem to offer an incredible ROI. What I will say is that relatively soft ratings for the NBA on television has apparently been overblown in terms of being important if these companies are throwing themselves at the league.

Great piece by Lindsay Gibbs on the seismic changes coming to the WNBA with Caitlin Clark’s arrival and Candace Parker’s retirement.

Brad Stevens’ peers overwhelmingly voted him as the Executive of the Year. Sam Presti finished second, Tim Connelly narrowly edged Leon Rose for third despite Rose appearing on more ballots overall. There are some funny votes here. Not “ha-ha” funny but “uh, really?” funny. Monte McNair getting a single first-place vote this year is a trip given that the biggest criticism of the Kings front office is that they did nothing. Joe Cronin with two second-place votes? I assume one of those was not from Pat Riley.

A double dose of Kelly Dwyer: on the Suns’ unceremonious exit and the Nuggets’ triumph.

Michael Pina on how screwed the Suns are.

Tyler Parker on the glory of Jalen Brunson being the Knicks’ long-awaited superstar.

Rob Mahoney’s field guide to modern NBA point guards.

Jared Dubin says goodbye to the eliminated teams.

Newsy Marc Stein round-up on the coaching carousel and more.

Until next time, stay safe and be excellent to each other.