Knicks complete 4-0 sweep of 76ers with 144-114 Game 4 win

The Knicks didn’t just close out Philadelphia. They detonated the series. New York beat the 76ers 144-114 in Game 4 on May 10, hit 25 threes, and finished a 4-0 second-round sweep that sends them back to the Eastern Conference finals for the second straight year. (nba.com) ### Why did this game feel over so fast? Because the Knicks basically turned the first quarter into a shooting drill. They made 11 threes in the opening period — an NBA postseason record for a quarter — and never let Philadelphia breathe after the Sixers took the game’s first 2-0 lead. By halftime, New York had already buried 18 threes and built a margin that made the rest feel like cleanup. (msn.com) ### Who actually drove the blowout? It was a full-team avalanche more than a one-man takeover. Miles McBride got the start for the injured OG Anunoby and led New York with 25 points while hitting 7 of 9 from deep. Jalen Brunson scored 22, Josh Hart added 19, and the weirdly scary part for Philly was that nobody needed to score 35. The Knicks just kept sending another shooter, another push in transition, another clean look. (abcnews.com) ### Why was McBride such a big deal? Because this was supposed to be the spot where Anunoby’s injury made the Knicks thinner. Instead, McBride flipped the problem. He opened 4-for-4 from three in the first quarter, stretched Philadelphia’s defense immediately, and made the Knicks’ spacing look even more vicious. That is the kind of swing that breaks a playoff game — the backup comes in, and somehow the math gets worse. (abcnews.com) ### Was this just hot shooting? No — the shooting was the headline, but the structure behind it mattered. New York’s defense kept creating runouts and early-clock chances, and the offense kept turning those chances into rhythm threes instead of late-clock bailouts. The Knicks tied the NBA playoff record with 25 made threes, but the bigger point is that they generated enough clean attempts to make a record feel almost logical. (nba.com) ### What happened to the 76ers? The same thing that happens to a lot of teams when a series gets away from them — the rotation started to look too small, the margin for error vanished, and every defensive mistake got punished instantly. Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey were still the center of everything Philly tried to do, but the Sixers never found a way to slow the Knicks’ perimeter barrage or turn the game into something uglier and slower. By the second half, the building felt taken over by Knicks fans. (inquirer.com) ### Why does the sweep matter beyond one game? Because sweeps at this stage are about more than survival. They buy rest. They avoid a long, bruising series. They also say something pretty blunt about the balance of power. New York has now won seven straight playoff games and reached the conference finals again, which makes last year’s run look less like a spike and more like the new baseline. (cbsnews.com) ### Who’s next for New York? The Knicks will face the winner of the Cleveland-Detroit series in the Eastern Conference finals. As of May 11, Detroit leads that series 2-1, so New York gets the rare luxury of waiting while the other side keeps spending energy. In May, that matters almost as much as shot-making. (cbsnews.com) ### What’s the bottom line? This wasn’t a tense closeout. It was a statement. The Knicks lost a starter, went on the road, tied a playoff record with 25 threes, posted a franchise playoff-high 144 points, and walked into the East finals looking deeper and more dangerous than they did a week ago. (sports.yahoo.com)