OG Anunoby's Hamstring Kept Him Out. Deuce McBride Made NBA Playoff History In Twelve Minutes.

Miles 'Deuce' McBride entered the New York Knicks' starting lineup Sunday because OG Anunoby could not play through a right-hamstring strain — an injury Anunoby suffered late in Game 2 of the second round and that has now sidelined him for two straight games. McBride, a fifth-year guard out of West Virginia who underwent core-muscle surgery on February 5 and acknowledged in late April he was still playing through residual pain, finished his first start of the 2026 postseason with 25 points and seven made three-pointers. Four of those threes came in the opening twelve minutes. The Knicks beat the Philadelphia 76ers 144-114, swept the series, and headed to the Eastern Conference Finals for the second consecutive year.

The first quarter became the entire game's story line. The Knicks shot eleven-for-thirteen from three-point range in those twelve minutes — eleven makes that tied the NBA postseason record for most threes in any quarter and broke the league's first-quarter mark outright. Jalen Brunson added two of those threes and finished with 22 points overall. Josh Hart and Karl-Anthony Towns each scored 17. McBride's four-for-four opening gave him a record of his own: the first Knick to make four three-pointers in any playoff quarter since the NBA began tracking play-by-play in 1997. The team's 30-point final margin understates how decisive the first quarter was.

The 25 total threes tied a number first set by the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers in their Eastern Conference Semifinal against the Atlanta Hawks and matched by the 2023 Milwaukee Bucks in their first-round series against the Miami Heat. Only three teams in NBA playoff history have hit twenty-five threes in a postseason game. New York's 19.4-point margin of victory averaged across rounds one and two is the largest two-round differential since the 1984 expansion to a 16-team postseason field — a 42-year window that includes the Showtime Lakers, the Jordan-era Bulls, and the Warriors' four-finals dynasty. The Cavaliers went on to win the 2016 NBA Finals. The Bucks lost in five.

McBride's path back to the floor matters as much as what he did on it. The Knicks announced on February 5 that he would require surgery to repair a core-muscle tear — what teams sometimes call a sports-hernia procedure — and that he would be out indefinitely. He returned for the playoffs roughly two months later but acknowledged in late April that he was still playing through residual pain. He signed a three-year, thirteen-million-dollar extension in December 2023 that pays him roughly $4.3 million this season and $4 million next year, and the 2026-27 campaign is the final year of that deal. Sunday night was the most consequential game of that contract.

OG Anunoby has missed Games 3 and 4 with what the team is calling a right-hamstring strain rather than a tear, and New York has not committed him to a return for the conference-finals opener. McBride's emergency start gives the staff a real read on what a continued absence costs the rotation. The Knicks lost in the Eastern Conference Finals last year; the 2026 group has now reached the same round carrying the largest scoring differential through two rounds of any team since the 16-team postseason era began in 1984. McBride was the leading scorer Sunday. He had come off the bench in every game of this year's postseason before the opening tip.

The Philadelphia 76ers exit with the kind of questions that follow any team swept by twenty-plus points per game. Joel Embiid played Games 3 and 4 with right hip and ankle injuries and missed Game 2 entirely. The franchise has not advanced past the second round since 2001 — a 25-year streak that predates the first iPhone. Paul George and Tyrese Maxey complete the team's All-Star trio. Daryl Morey, the team's president of basketball operations, now has roughly six weeks until the 2026 NBA Draft to decide whether the trio gets one more run together, or whether the supporting rotation needs to be torn down and rebuilt before training camp.

The Knicks now wait for the winner of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Detroit Pistons to determine their conference-finals opponent. The Pistons took the first two games of that series; the Cavaliers won Game 3 behind 30 points from Donovan Mitchell. Either matchup will be the deepest test of New York's bench rotation since the playoffs began. McBride's contract decision comes at the end of next season, and the franchise has spent the past two years treating him as a key piece of a long playoff window. A four-for-four first quarter in May is the kind of game that ends any debate about whether the second contract should be guaranteed.