Winning the War

Let's look back at a game and a series for the ages.

Good afternoon, and thanks for your patience. Consider this a bonus weekend edition of the KFS Newsletter, which we’ll spend looking back at round one. On Monday, we’ll start looking forward to the Pacers, likely in mailbag form. Keep an eye out for a call for questions on the Substack chat. Without further ado…

Game 6: Knicks 118, Sixers 115

10 Things

A series and a close-out game that good deserves a full on, David Letterman-style Top 10 list, so here we go: the top 10 things that defined both Game 6 and New York’s 4-2 first round win over the Philadelphia 76ers…

1. Resilience. 69.

No, I don’t have a dirty mind on this lovely Friday afternoon.

69 is the total number of points you get if you add up all the leads the Sixers had in this series. They led every game by double digits at some point with the exception of Game 5, where their lead topped out at nine.

And yet, at no time did Philly ever go up by more than 15 points despite leading for about 150 total minutes over six games.

So how did the Knicks pulled off a 4-2 series win despite this fact? You can't start a fire without a spark. Last night, with the Sixers on a 9-0 run and threatening to run away with things in the middle of the third quarter, it was Donte DiVincenzo’s turn to play fireman:

This “switch pocket” three (a shot that occurs when the defense is in the middle of a switch but can’t execute it in time) has been a staple of his shot diet all year, which is really all you need to know about how this team consistently comes up with big plays in big moments.

They do what got them here and (pun intended) they always trust the process.