We just ended a fifty-three-year title drought in June, and five months later this same Knicks roster still can’t get one defensive possession right when it matters, against a 41-year-old in his fifth game with a team he joined over the summer. Philadelphia beat New York 98-93 on Friday at Xfinity Mobile Arena in NBA Cup group play, and LeBron James sealed it with a fadeaway that should not exist for a man his age.
Twice this season now.
Jalen Brunson had just hit a three to put New York up 90-89 with 1:32 left, the kind of shot that normally decides these games in the champions’ favor now. OG Anunoby was draped on LeBron on the other end, the same Anunoby who hit the greatest shot in Knicks history this past spring. LeBron rose up over him anyway, contested and off-balance, and put Philly back ahead with 1:10 to go.
V.J. Edgecombe stretched the lead with a three of his own. Brunson split a pair of free throws to cut it back to one possession. With about twelve seconds left, LeBron sealed it for good with a putback off a missed shot.
Three different Sixers took a turn closing the door, and New York never found the key for any of them.
This is the second time this season the champs have lost to this exact group. The first was October 20, a 106-100 loss that also happened to be LeBron’s actual debut as a 76er after he took a record pay cut to get there as a free agent in July.
Didn’t matter then either.
His own son couldn’t muster much reaction to the move when it happened over the summer. The Knicks have reacted to it twice now with a loss.
LeBron finished with 20 points, 9 rebounds, 8 assists and a chase-down block on Anunoby in the third quarter, his best game as a Sixer yet. Tyrese Maxey was the best player on the floor regardless, scoring 27 on 10-of-19 shooting, and Anfernee Simons added 21 off the bench on five triples.
Brunson matched Maxey’s energy without matching his efficiency, needing 22 shots to get to 24 points, and Karl-Anthony Towns had 22 and 12 boards in a losing effort. The 76ers held New York to 40.7 percent shooting and 31.7 percent from three, which tracks, since Philadelphia came in with one of the best defenses in the league and left with it fully intact.
https://x.com/NBA/status/2116361601460949483
That’s the whole season compressed into one clip: a champion up one point, in position to close, and a 41-year-old in a jersey he’s worn five times finds the gap nobody else sealed.
October, though. Not May.
This is an NBA Cup group game, not an elimination game, and Towns and Brunson both played well enough that this reads more like a bad individual matchup than a crumbling contender. The banner isn’t coming down over one Thursday in Philadelphia.
But a bad matchup that bites you twice in ten days stops being bad luck and starts being a question somebody in that building needs to answer. Someone in the Knicks’ locker room said it plainly after the buzzer, that it took them too long to show up. Two losses into the LeBron-in-Philly era, that explanation is already thin, and it’s on the defending champs to find a real one before next time.
