‘It’s a chemistry thing:’ Behind the Knicks’ staggering playoff stretch that has New York dreaming big

Nick Nurse understood the disadvantage his Philadelphia 76ers were facing, having just one day off between completing a shocking 3-1 comeback with an emotional Game 7 win in Boston on a Saturday night and tipping off the second round at Madison Square Garden on a Monday. All this considered, though, he didn’t really mind the quick turnaround.

“I’ve always said, even when I was coaching in the minors, that when your team’s winning, you just want to keep the games coming,” Nurse said before Game 1. “You don’t want any space between them. Just keep them coming. Let’s get to the next one.”

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That, um, didn’t work out for the Sixers, but you’d certainly understand if Mike Brown was feeling that way at the start of the week. Why the hell would you want to take any time off when you’ve been playing as well as the New York Knicks have over the last two weeks?

Alas, the Knicks now find themselves with a week to kill, because they just spent a week killing Philadelphia. Four games, four wins, by a combined 89 points — one of the most dominant offensive postseason performances of the last 30 years, in which New York hunted Joel Embiid on one end of the court, smothered Tyrese Maxey on the other, and concluded the curbstomping with a Mother’s Day maiming that was over, for all intents and purposes, in about four and a half minutes.

New York’s nuking of the Sixers continued a run that’s seen Brown’s club rip off seven straight victories since CJ McCollum put them in a 2-1 hole — a moment of adversity that happened 19 days and roughly 9 million lifetimes ago — to advance to the Eastern Conference finals for a second consecutive spring. The vibes felt immaculate at this point last May, too, with New York having just vanquished a Boston squad that had its number throughout the regular season; when they beat the Celtics, the Knicks had reached a level that I’m not sure anybody outside 4 Penn Plaza believed they could reach.

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The way the Knicks have played over these past seven games, though? It’s a level that I’m not sure any sentient being, in any far-flung fork of the…

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Author : Dan Devine

Publish date : 2026-05-11 21:51:00

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