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 to cap an epic 46-point, nine-assist, season-saving effort.
The Sixers kept their 2023-24 season alive with a wild 112-106 overtime victory Tuesday night, forcing a Game 6 Thursday night at the Wells Fargo Center.
They 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 1:02 to play. After Jalen Brunson threw the ball out of bounds, Tobias Harris sealed the victory with two free throws.
That came after another unfathomable finish to regulation in this building, when Maxey converted a four-point play and buried a logo 3-pointer in the final 25.1 seconds to erase a six-point deficit and force overtime.
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.
But like Sunday’s Game 4, Embiid played the entire second half. 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 on a one-handed alley-oop slam and a jump shot 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 frame. Both teams essentially traded leads for the rest of the quarter, setting up the contested final frame.
Brunson, a top-notch MVP candidate this season and former Villanova star, finished with 40 points before that final costly turnover. Fellow former Villanova standout and Brunson’s college teammate Josh Hart added 18 points, nine rebounds and four assists to continue his series.