PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Jalen Brunson scored 33 points and sealed the game with big buckets late to the delight of roaring Knicks fans, leading New York to a 109-94 win over the Philadelphia 76ers on Friday night for a 3-0 lead in the Eastern Conference semifinals.
Game 4 is Sunday in Philadelphia.
Brunson shook off a 2-of-8 start from the floor and finished 11 of 22 in 38 minutes to send the Knicks to their sixth straight postseason victory.
“I'm Linus. Jalen's my blanket,” first-year Knicks coach Mike Brown said. “He helps me relax at a lot of different times during the course of the game."
With 2016 and 2018 Villanova national championship banners hanging in the rafters, the so-called Nova Knicks all took turns taking the fight out of the Sixers in the fourth quarter, turning a four-point lead into another double-digit victory.
Josh Hart had 12 points and 11 rebounds and Mikal Bridges added 23 points, pushing the Knicks within one victory of their second straight conference finals appearance.
When Brown took the job after Tom Thibodeau was fired, the veteran coach said he wouldn't know what kind of team he really had until he got “into the trenches with them.”
Brown now sees the makings of a championship team.
“Yeah, OK, we might have a chance at this,” he said.
The Knicks have the luxury not to rush back forward OG Anunoby, who's averaging 21.4 points per game in the postseason. He sat out with a strained right hamstring and remains day to day.
Joel Embiid scored 18 points for the Sixers in his return after he missed Game 2 with a sprained right ankle and a sore right hip.
"I thought he gave us everything he could," coach Nick Nurse said.
Embiid's return from an appendectomy helped spur the Sixers' rally from a 3-1 deficit in the opening round to stun the Celtics.
Beating the Knicks four straight times — including twice in New York — seems like a much harder hill to climb for Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and the Sixers.
Kelly Oubre Jr. scored 22 points and Maxey added 17. Paul George scored 15 points in the first quarter, then went scoreless and missed all nine shots the rest of the game as the Sixers blew a 12-point lead.
George and Maxey each failed to shoot a single free throw.
The 76ers gamely tried to make it a series. Quintin Grimes hit his first two 3s of the game early in the fourth to trim the lead to 88-84.
The familiar faces in Philly — Brunson, Hart and Bridges all played for Villanova — seized control of the game.
Hart and Bridges made consecutive baskets that pushed the lead to 92-84. Brunson, the stone-cold shooter built for these moments, buried a 3 from the top of the arc that made it 95-86 during a 9-0 Knicks run, to the delight of the visiting fans.
Embiid openly pleaded with fans ahead of the series not to sell their tickets to New Yorkers.
Celebrity Row regulars at Madison Square Garden, Spike Lee, Timothée Chalamet, Tracy Morgan and Ben Stiller all made the trip to Philadelphia, along with thousands of less famous Knicks fans — and the split crowd erupted in cheers, boos and the occasional middle finger on just about every basket.
Chalamet rose from his seat and applauded when Landry Shamet buried a late 3 in the third that stretched the lead to 85-76. Shamet had 14 points this entire postseason before he scored 15 in Game 3.
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