ESPN’s Vincent Goodwill on the Keys to Who Wins Knicks vs 76ers Semi Series

ESPN's Vincent Goodwill is going to be chronicling Knicks vs. 76ers for what he hopes will be all seven games. He stopped by The Rich Eisen Show ahead of Game 1 to set the table, and he came armed with a metaphor that Rich could not stop quoting.

The Sixers, Goodwill said, are still wearing the cologne of the Boston Celtics.

That is the question that will define this series. Did Philadelphia spend everything it had clawing back from a 3-1 hole against Boston, or do they still have enough emotional fuel for a Knicks team that has been waiting and playing markedly better since Game 4 of the Hawks series?

First Goodwill zoomed out on the entire first round. His takeaway: surprises everywhere, and a possible pendulum swing away from three-point shooting.

"All the great three-point shooting teams are gone," he said. "And even though that's a great thing for the league from an entertainment standpoint, maybe we're looking at it and saying it doesn't win."

He also flagged a shift in the math of postseason comebacks. 3-1 deficits are no longer the death sentence they used to be. Talent catches up. Injuries reshuffle the deck. Seven-game series breathe differently than they used to.

On the Knicks-Sixers matchup, the rivalry layer is what hooks him. The Joel Embiid versus Karl-Anthony Towns story. The Embiid versus Mitchell Robinson story, with the memory of Robinson getting dragged down by Embiid on the floor in a previous postseason and missing the rest of that series. Paul George is the new variable. Tyrese Maxey and B.J. Edgecombe are putting up numbers. Embiid himself has had some really big games against the Knicks in the playoffs.

The top-line talent question, Goodwill said, is not really in dispute. A lot of people are calling Philadelphia the most talented team in the East from top to bottom, especially with a healthy Embiid.

The sweat equity question is the one he keeps coming back to.

"There is no additional days off, Rich. You guys are playing seven games in 14 days," Goodwill said. "I wonder about the emotion of coming back from 3-1 and every game being an elimination game and then having to start over with a new team in your face."

His prediction: the first two games will not tell us much. Games 3 and 4 will.

Rich pivoted to the controversy already hanging over the series. Jaylen Brown's postgame comments calling out Embiid's flopping. Goodwill said the topic is rich in everyday conversation between officials, the league office, players, and team officials.

His read on how the league got here was unusually direct. "Part of this is us," he said, meaning fans and observers older than him who thought basketball was too physical and pushed the league to clean it up. The pendulum has swung so far the other way that players have figured out the workaround.

"All I have to do is pretend I got touched and like a sniper hit me and go down and the official will call the foul," Goodwill said.

That is why, he argued, regular season basketball looks like an exhibition compared to the playoffs. They look like different sports.

The Brown call-out is awkward, Goodwill noted, because it is coming from the team that just blew a 3-1 lead while taking far more threes than twos. Nobody is in a hurry to take complaints from Boston right now.

But the case, he said, is not without merit. Embiid does hit the floor a lot when the contact looks minimal. And for Knicks fans heading into Game 1 with two oversized bodies in Robinson and Towns ready to send Embiid's way, that is a very good conversation to be having.