Knicks determined to not let 76ers' physicality take them out of their game

PHILADELPHIA — In the locker room after Thursday night’s loss to the 76ers, Knicks players were calm, measured and uttering no bold declarations or predictions. Even the complaints were muted.

There instead was a determination that if this is how their playoff series is going to be, a bare-knuckles battle as the teams head to Game 4 on Sunday, then so be it.

“I knew we were going to come in to a very hostile environment,” Miles McBride said. “I think we matched it. We didn’t go above it. And throughout the game, just fighting back and forth, we let their crowd be in it. I think they were just feeding off of that as well.

“So I think we have to come in on Sunday and from the beginning, throw the first punch and keep throwing them.”

“Each game is going to be different, so you just got to respond,” coach Tom Thibodeau said. “This is playoff basketball. It’s gonna go up. It’s gonna escalate, and we got to bring it . . . My thing is, there’s two teams. They responded and now we got to respond. We got to do a lot better. We got to fix it.”

The Knicks, for the most part, didn’t want to get into griping about the officiating — although Thibodeau did have his digs. Instead, the focus was on changing what happened and trying to deliver the sort of performance they did in the first two games of the series.

The Knicks played those games physically, and the NBA’s Last Two Minute report backed up the 76ers’ complaints that Tyrese Maxey was fouled twice on the turnover that helped set up Donte DiVincenzo’s winning three-point field goal in Game 2.

The 76ers got what they wanted from the officials. Joel Embiid flirted with an ejection, getting flagged for a flagrant 1 foul in the first quarter when he pulled Mitchell Robinson by his legs to the floor. It was a play that would seem to meet the description for a flagrant 2 of “unnecessary and excessive” contact.

Robinson wasn’t knocked out of the game on that foul, but he went down again when Embiid collided with him later in the first half and left Wells Fargo Center in a walking boot. He was ruled out of the second half with a sprained left ankle.

Embiid dodged another flagrant just two minutes earlier when he brought his knee into the midsection of Isaiah Hartenstein, who sat at his locker with huge scratches across his neck, showing the effects of a physical Game 3.

“That’s not a basketball play,” Hartenstein said of Embiid’s flagrant foul on Robinson. “I think that’s the take on that. That’s on the refs. I’m not a ref.”

“I mean, we’re just happy Mitch didn’t get a serious injury on that,” Josh Hart said. “I’m all for tough fouls, tough playoff fouls, but that’s something that can put a guy out for a significant amount of time. So we’re lucky he didn’t get seriously hurt during that time.

“We knew what Game 3 was going to be . . . We knew, especially how Game 2 ended. Am I surprised? Not at all.”

So if you expect the Knicks to come out Sunday afternoon and try to deliver the first punch, there also is the matter of stopping Embiid’s scoring. He put up 50 points Thursday night, and what particularly upset the Knicks was that he did it by getting to the free-throw line 21 times — more than the Knicks did as a team (19).

There was no update Friday on Robinson’s status, but it seems unlikely that he would be ready to play in Game 4, making the task of trying to stop Embiid even more difficult.

The 76ers played with more desperation than the Knicks, who will have two days of Thibodeau rolling video of that evidence. While Thibodeau said he will send his clips to the league to let them know that Jalen Brunson is not getting the calls that Embiid is, the more important film work may be readying his team for the physical battle that seems inevitable for these two teams.

“I think about every time these two teams play each other — regular season or playoffs — it’s a rivalry,” 76ers coach Nick Nurse said. “It’s intense. It’s got history. It’s physical. Now it’s the playoffs on top of it, right? As far as did I say, ‘Hey, calm down’? No. I think they were kinda isolated incidents. It seemed like they happened right on top of each other there for a bit. They just happened, but it’s physical, man. You never know when there’s gonna be a real physical play in that game. It just so happened to be early.”

By Steve Popper

steve.popper@newsday.com@StevePopper

Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.