Thanks to a signature 50-point performance from Joel Embiid and some crucial minutes from role players like Cam Payne, the Sixers emerged victorious after Thursday night's crucial Game 3 against the New York Knicks. Now, they await Sunday's Game 4 with a tremendous opportunity: even the series at 2-2 before it returns to Madison Square Garden for Game 5 on Tuesday night.
With this in mind, let's open up the (Twitter) lines for another mailbag and answer some of your questions ahead of Sixers-Knicks Game 4:
From @jaydeedubbleya: Was the Sixers' [Game 3 success on] offense due to the quality of looks they were getting or just shooting variance?
Sometimes teams win games because they make an unusual amount of difficult looks and/or their opponent simply misses shots that normally go in. I do not believe this was the case in for the Sixers in their Game 3 victory.
First of all, the Sixers won this game and had their best offensive showing of the postseason by far because Embiid played like the best player in the world for the first time in his playoff career. After somewhat of a slow start, Embiid got in a groove in the second quarter, and in the second half took things to an entirely different level.
The reigning NBA MVP completely dismantled the Knicks, both individually and collectively. He forced Knicks centers Isaiah Hartenstein and Mitchell Robinson into foul trouble for the vast majority of the game. He played a largely clean game, identifying Knicks double-teams properly and making the right reads to counter them. The Knicks are a tremendous and physical defensive team, and they deserve a lot of props for how well they handled the Embiid assignment through the first two games. But when Embiid is the best version of himself, it simply does not matter who is in front of him. Embiid's two highest-scoring games this year came against players who will finish in the top two of the NBA's Defensive Player of the Year race for 2023-24: he scored 51 points against Rudy Gobert and the Minnesota Timberwolves in December, and just over a month later scored a career-high 70 points against rookie phenom Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs.
Embiid is not going to score 50 points on 19 field goal attempts in every game for the remainder of this series. But in a lot of ways, his success in Game 3 was repeatable -- because it stemmed from good process and quick decision-making.
From @norcal823: Do you see [Sixers head coach Nick] Nurse working [De'Anthony] Melton into the rotation?
The Sixers upgraded Melton to available for Game 3, but he did not factor into the rotation whatsoever. It does seem that Melton is continuing to battle to make himself an option despite his lengthy back injury, and I am sure he was genuinely available if the Sixers needed him under urgent circumstances on Thursday night. But it feels like the team putting Melton in front of the media the day before the game to announce his return and then upgrading him to available before tip-off might have been somewhat of a smokescreen -- perhaps some gamesmanship from a team looking for any advantage it can find against a 50-win Knicks team.
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Before Game 3 started, Nurse was noncommittal about whether or not Melton would play, and gave few details about what his role might look like if he did. But maybe the writing was on the wall when, during the same media availability, Nurse made a point to once again stress the suboptimal nature of the situation. The Sixers are treating every single contest as a must-win, as every team should this time of year. Melton has logged 20 minutes of NBA action since Feb. 27.
There is going to be an adjustment period whenever the 25-year old free agent-to-be guard returns to the floor, and a crucial first-round playoff game is not an ideal setting for a player to shake off rust -- nor is any other playoff game.
When talking about his decision to insert Payne into the rotation in Game 3, Nurse mentioned that the team felt comfortable having Melton in its "back pocket" should a situation arise in which his services are required. But the more quotes that come out from Nurse about Melton's status and the more time there is to read the tea leaves, it seems increasingly like the ideal scenario for Melton would be to get into a game in its final moments when the outcome has already been decided. If the Sixers were ever to participate in such a contest again, then he could gradually work his way into rotation consideration later on.
As the Sixers attempt to recover from the initial 0-2 deficit the Knicks forced onto them, it seems to be hard for Nurse to stomach the idea of throwing someone with such little playing time under his belt over the last multiple months into such an important situation. It is not hard to understand why.
From @bwoodworth: Do we get a Batum-like role player big game performance from anybody on the team the rest of this series? If yes, which player is most likely to rise to the occasion?
While signature performances from superstars are the most memorable and most important, man is it fun when a role player owns a game, particularly in the postseason. Batum's epic two-way masterclass against the Miami Heat in the Play-In Tournament was legendary, and Embiid cannot do it all on his own. The Sixers, of course, would happily welcome one of their role players taking over a game at some point in this series.
Not that role players' responsibilities are all about scoring -- in fact, in most cases they are not -- but generally, the hallmark of such a performance is an unusually-high point total.
I suppose Batum could knock down six three-pointers in a game again, but even Batum himself admitted after his scoring outburst last week that it was an obvious anomaly. Kyle Lowry has only scored 15 or more points in a game four times as a Sixer between the regular season and postseason. Buddy Hield has the capability to get hot from three-point range, but his minutes continue to decline. The competition that may be brewing between Hield and Payne for minutes may take them both out of the race as the most likely to win the Sixers a game on their own (not that Payne's 11 points were not vital to the Sixers in Game 3). God bless Paul Reed, but for obvious reasons, he will not see the floor enough for there to be a BBall Paul Game while Embiid is healthy. Frankly, it would feel silly to forecast any sort of significant contributions from Tobias Harris at this point -- Harris looks like a complete shell of himself on the offensive end of the floor, where he is contributing almost nothing on a game-by-game basis at this point.
That leaves one option outside of the All-Star duo of Embiid and Maxey to author a signature moment: Kelly Oubre Jr.
Oubre had left his mark on the series across its first two games by doing an outstanding job defending Knicks All-Star point guard Jalen Brunson, but New York's offensive engine finally got going in Game 3 and became dominant, scoring 39 points and dishing out 13 assists to boot.
The Sixers were always going to need Oubre to pick up his offense, though, after he scored just 14 points on as many shots across the first two games of the series. Nurse said as much before Game 3 when discussing the series performance Oubre had put in to date.
"He has used a lot of his energy [on defense]," Nurse said. "We just need him feeling good, going for it a little bit."
Though Brunson got the best of Oubre in Game 3, the Sixers wing who has thrived in several roles during his first year with the team finally broke through as a scoring threat. Oubre posted 15 points on pristine efficiency: he shot 6-8 from the field and 2-4 from beyond the arc. Oubre also grabbed seven rebounds (three on the offensive glass), dished out three assists and nabbed two steals.
This is not necessarily a prediction that Oubre is going to single-handedly win the Sixers a game during this series. But if someone other than Embiid and Maxey can do that, right now Oubre feels like the most primed candidate.