The pick-and-roll problem Joel Embiid cannot escape starts before the screen even arrives. Jalen Brunson lifts a hand near the top of the floor, and the building seems to recognize the play before the Sixers do. A big jogs up. A defender lowers his hips. Joel Embiid waits near the foul line, enormous and wounded, caught between the rim he has to protect and the jumper he cannot keep giving away.
Then the crowd starts leaning forward.
That sound tells the story. Sneakers scrape. Hands clap. Somebody in the second row groans before Brunson even turns the corner. It feels familiar now, almost cruelly so, because Philadelphia has seen this movie too many times in May. The opponent changes. The wound does not.
Step up, and the ball slips behind Embiid. Drop back, and Brunson walks into the soft pocket. Blitz, and the weak side turns into a fire drill. Switch, and the Sixers risk turning their best player into a man defending in space on bad legs.
An MVP trophy looks beautiful on a shelf. It cannot help a center slide his feet when the whole series moves to the top of the key.
The dread comes from recognition
Philadelphia fans do not fear every pick-and-roll. They fear this one. The high one. The slow one. The one where the guard knows he has time, the screener knows Embiid cannot chase forever, and the weak-side defenders start cheating toward danger before the pass even leaves the ball handler’s hand.
Across the court, Embiid still looks like a problem no defense should want. He can catch at the nail and turn a possession into panic, He can jab once, rise over a contest, and make a good defender look like a chair, He can bully his way to the line until the opponent’s frontcourt starts collecting fouls like parking tickets.
That production earns him the benefit of the doubt until the playoffs start.
This season, the warning signs came early. Embiid’s 38-game regular season was not load management theatre. It was a flare shot into the sky. His lower body had already sent the message: the grind would ask for more than it should. The ankle, the hip, the knee history, the heavy landings, the long possessions on offense — all of it followed him into May.
Still, health only explains part of the story. The screen game has haunted him through different rosters, different co-stars, and different coaches. Brett Brown saw the early version. Doc Rivers lived with the middle chapter. Nick Nurse, as creative as any defensive coach in the league, has tried to bend the picture with zone looks, pre-switching, late help, and short bursts of aggression.
May keeps ripping the mask off.
Brunson is not improvising. He is reading a menu.
Brunson does not attack Embiid like a guard in a rush. He attacks like a man with the answer key. That makes the whole thing more unsettling.
Some guards need speed to punish a big. Brunson uses pace. He comes off the screen shoulder-to-hip, keeps his defender trapped on his back, and waits for Embiid to declare himself. If Embiid sinks, Brunson rises, If Embiid steps higher, Brunson snakes into the lane, If the helper arrives from the corner, he fires the pass and lets the possession bleed somewhere else.
NBA.com’s matchup notes around Knicks-Sixers made the problem plain. New York kept using the player Embiid guarded as Brunson’s screener, turning Philadelphia’s defensive anchor into the target. In Game 1, 15 Brunson ball screens involving Embiid’s man produced 19 points from the possessions that directly ended in shots, turnovers, or free throws.
Second Spectrum tracking widened the picture. The Knicks put Embiid into 27 pick-and-rolls that night and pulled 44 points from those actions.
That is not noise. That is a plan.
The Knicks were not hunting a mismatch in some vague, television-studio sense. They were pulling the same lever over and over, waiting for Philadelphia’s shell to tilt. One screen created a pull-up. Another dragged the low man toward the roll. Another opened the corner. Before long, the Sixers were no longer defending Brunson. They were negotiating with him.
Madison Square Garden understood the target. Brunson understood it. Philadelphia understood it too, which made the whole thing feel worse.
Drop coverage is safety until it becomes surrender
In theory, Embiid in drop coverage makes sense. Keep the giant near the rim. Let him take away layups. Force guards into midrange shots. Trust the point-of-attack defender to fight over the screen and recover from behind.
That works when the guard plays fast and careless. It dies when the guard plays like Brunson.
Just beyond the arc, the cushion turns into comfort. Brunson sees Embiid retreat, measures the space, and steps into that little pocket near the elbow. No panic. No rush. Just balance, touch, and the kind of patience that makes a defense feel naked.
Because of that cushion, Philadelphia often starts protecting two places at once and ends up protecting neither. The rear-view defender chases. Embiid waits. The roller dives. The weak side pinches. Suddenly, a clean jumper becomes a lob, or a lob threat becomes a corner three.
This is where Embiid’s dominance gets complicated. Near the rim, he still changes everything. Before the rim, in that strip of floor between the arc and the paint, his size can turn against him. He has to backpedal without opening the gate, He has to contest without fouling, He has to track the roller, the shooter, and Brunson’s hips all at once.
No center enjoys that job. Embiid has to do it after carrying Philadelphia’s offense.
That is the trap. The Sixers need his power on one end and his mobility on the other. May demands both, then punishes him when his body cannot pay the bill.
This did not start with Brunson
Brunson has sharpened the blade, but he did not forge it.
The Sixers have seen this shape before. In 2021, Trae Young turned Philadelphia’s No. 1 seed into a citywide headache. The famous image from that series will always involve Ben Simmons passing up a dunk, and that play deserves its place in the archive. Yet Young spent that series bending the Sixers with high screens, floaters, lobs, and fouls. He did not even shoot well in Game 7. He went 5-of-23, finished with 21 points and 10 assists, and still walked out of Philadelphia with the Hawks alive and the Sixers shattered.
That should have scared everyone.
Young showed that a guard did not need a perfect shooting night to warp Philadelphia’s defense. He only needed repeated stress. One screen. Then another. Then another. Embiid could dominate stretches, score through contact, and still spend enough possessions in no-man’s-land for the series to slip.
Two years later, Jayson Tatum and Al Horford dragged the same fear into Boston’s Game 7. Tatum’s 51-point masterpiece looked, on paper, like a star simply catching fire. The film told a nastier story. Boston used Tatum-Horford actions to make Embiid think in layers: step to the ball, track Horford, protect the rim, watch the weak side, recover before the next pass.
That is a lot to ask from anyone. It becomes a nightmare when the same player must also rescue the offense.
The cleanest Boston cut came on a ghost screen. Horford moved toward Tatum as if he would make contact. Embiid braced for the pick. Then Horford slipped behind him. Tobias Harris had to help. The rotation cracked. Boston found the dunk.
The screen never really happened. The fear of the screen did the damage.
That possession still matters because it showed how deep the problem had gone. Opponents did not merely attack Embiid’s feet. They attacked his memory. They made him defend what might happen, and that half-second of doubt opened the floor.
The warning had two full springs to age
The 2024 Knicks series should have lived on every wall in the Sixers’ practice facility. It was not last postseason. In the current 2026 setting, it was two springs ago, which makes the miss even more damning. Philadelphia had time to study it. The league had time to copy it. New York had time to refine it.
Brunson’s 47-point, 10-assist Game 4 in 2024 spelled out the danger in bold type. NBA.com’s film notes from that night captured the volume: New York set 52 ball screens for Brunson, and 35 came from the player Embiid guarded.
That number almost feels rude.
The Knicks did not hide the plan. They announced it with every possession. Bring Embiid’s man up. Make the big choose. Test the legs, Test the coverage, Test the help, Test the stomach of the building.
Sometimes Embiid stayed back, and Brunson pulled up. Sometimes Embiid crept higher, and Brunson turned the corner. Late in the game, one drive through the middle felt less like a basket than a verdict. Philadelphia knew the coverage. New York knew the coverage. Brunson still got where he wanted.
That is the difference between a weakness and a playoff weakness. A normal flaw costs you possessions. A playoff flaw becomes the opponent’s identity.
By 2026, the Knicks did not need to discover anything. The blueprint was already public. Every coach in the league knew the bargain: let Philadelphia’s offense run through Embiid and Tyrese Maxey, then make Embiid dance with Brunson on the other end until the legs start talking.
Nurse can scheme. Brunson can count.
Nick Nurse has built a career on discomfort. His best defenses never let stars see the same picture twice. They throw zones at rhythm scorers, They trap from strange angles, They overload one side, then rotate like they have six bodies on the floor.
Philadelphia has options.
The Sixers can show higher and recover. They can blitz Brunson for a few possessions, They can pre-switch late, placing a wing on the screener so Embiid avoids the first action, They can scram him out of a bad matchup after the catch, They can mix zone, shade Brunson toward length, or send the low man earlier and trust the back side to rotate.
Every answer comes with a tax.
Blitz Brunson, and New York plays four-on-three. Drop Embiid, and Brunson gets rhythm. Switch, and the Knicks hunt the mismatch. Put Embiid on a lesser shooter, and Tom Thibodeau can use that player as a screener anyway. Hide him too aggressively, and the defense loses its spine.
This is where coaching creativity meets playoff cruelty. A trick can win one possession. Brunson makes you win the same possession 27 times.
That repetition drains a team. It also drains a crowd. You can feel it in Philadelphia when the first screen lands. The building does not gasp at the shot. It groans at the setup, because everyone senses the chain reaction coming.
The counter has to start on the same trip down
The Sixers cannot treat Maxey as a separate storyline. He has to become part of the same tactical argument.
If New York spends one possession making Embiid guard in space, Philadelphia’s next possession has to answer with pressure of its own. No pause. No reset into slow wrestling. Maxey has to bring the ball up with purpose, drag the Knicks’ big into the action, and force New York to feel the same discomfort it keeps creating.
That is the cleanest way to connect both ends.
Maxey changes the emotional temperature of the series because he gives the Sixers their own pressure point. He can turn a big man’s cautious feet into a layup line. He can reject screens, explode through a gap, and force the defense to rotate before it wants to. When he gets downhill, the Knicks stop hunting and start surviving.
If New York makes Embiid defend Brunson in space, Philadelphia has to make New York’s bigs feel the same anxiety. Karl-Anthony Towns, Mitchell Robinson, or any center involved in Maxey actions cannot relax. Maxey has to make them backpedal. Embiid has to screen with violence, roll with purpose, and punish the smaller defender when the Knicks overhelp.
The goal is not revenge. It is math.
Philadelphia needs to make every Brunson hunt expensive. A Brunson pull-up should come back as a Maxey drive. A Knicks roller should be answered by Embiid sealing deep. A corner three should be met with Maxey collapsing the lane and spraying the ball to a shooter before New York can load up.
Maxey cannot erase every defensive wound. He can bend the scoreboard, He can steal momentum, He can make the Knicks pay for loading up on Embiid. What he cannot do is remove the burden from Embiid’s legs.
The Sixers do not need Maxey to save Embiid from the problem. They need him to make the trade-offs worth it.
In May, survival rarely looks clean. Sometimes it looks like winning the ugly exchange by two points and walking away before the next fire starts.
The body tells the truth last
For all the tactical language, the story keeps returning to Embiid’s body. Not as a cheap excuse. As the floor beneath every decision.
A healthy Embiid already faces a hard job. This version faces a cruel one. The 38-game season told the league his margin had shrunk. The ankle and hip issues only made that visible. When he bends at the waist between possessions, hands on shorts, the picture says more than any postgame quote.
Then the next screen comes anyway.
That is what makes this matchup feel so punishing. Brunson does not care that Embiid has to score 30. Tatum did not care. Trae did not care. The Knicks do not care now. Playoff opponents rarely show sympathy to a superstar. They turn pain into a route map.
Embiid can still erase shots at the rim. He can still make defenders bounce off him in the post. He can still turn a whistle into a weapon and make a series feel like it belongs to his hands. But the sport has shifted around him. The modern playoff floor is wider, faster, and meaner. Guards do not challenge giants only at the rim anymore. They drag them into space and ask them to move until pride becomes fatigue.
That is the whole tension of Embiid’s career in one action. He is built to dominate basketball’s oldest areas. The post. The paint. The foul line. The glass. Yet the biggest games keep asking him to win in basketball’s newest pressure zone: the empty side, high-screen, five-out chessboard where hesitation feels fatal.
The next screen will ask again
The pick-and-roll problem Joel Embiid cannot escape has become more than a coverage issue. It is now the question opponents ask when the series gets serious.
Can Philadelphia keep him near the rim without giving Brunson practice shots?, Can Nurse change the picture before the Knicks settle into rhythm?, Can George, Oubre, and the rest of the perimeter group fight hard enough over screens to keep Embiid from choosing between two losses?, Can Maxey create enough chaos on the very next possession to make New York pay for the hunt?
Those answers will decide more than one series. They will decide how people talk about this era of Sixers basketball when the noise fades. Embiid has given Philadelphia MVP seasons, scoring titles, bruising nights, and a reason to believe the franchise could still punch through. He has also given opponents a target they trust when the game slows down.
That combination creates the dread.
Before the next possession, Brunson will bring the ball across half court. The crowd will buzz. A screener will rise. Embiid will take one heavy step toward the action, and every old spring will crowd into the moment: Trae’s floaters, Tatum’s Game 7, Horford’s slip, Brunson’s 47, the 27 screens, the 44 points.
Then the play will start.
Philadelphia does not need a perfect answer. Perfection left this story a long time ago. The Sixers need enough resistance, enough counters, enough Maxey pressure, enough Nurse chaos, and enough Embiid left in the legs to survive one more wave.
Just beyond the arc, another hand will rise.
Embiid will have to choose again.
Also Read: Stop Disrespecting Joel Embiid’s Impact on Load Management
FAQ
1. Why do teams target Joel Embiid in pick and rolls?
Teams pull Embiid away from the rim. That forces him to guard space, protect the paint, and read the roller at once.
2. Why is Jalen Brunson so hard for Embiid to defend?
Brunson plays with patience. He waits for Embiid to choose, then takes the jumper, drive, or pass the defense gives him.
3. Can Nick Nurse fix the Sixers’ pick-and-roll problem?
He can mix coverages and change matchups. Still, every answer carries a cost when Brunson keeps forcing the same choice.
4. How can Tyrese Maxey help Philadelphia?
Maxey can attack New York’s bigs right back. His speed can make the Knicks pay for hunting Embiid.
5. Did this issue start with the Knicks?
No. Trae Young and Jayson Tatum exposed similar stress points before Brunson turned them into a clearer playoff plan.
