This time they were the ones who couldn’t own the final minutes, partly because they couldn’t quite get enough offense when it was absolutely necessary, partly because their coach refused to burn his last timeout with Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart sitting at the scorer’s table as the game slipped away.

It added up to a familiar formula:

The Knicks would rather do anything than make things easy for themselves.

It happened at exactly this moment a year ago, when the Knicks could have closed the 76ers out in Game 5 of the first round, gagged away a lead that should’ve been enough in the final 30 seconds, and required a return trip to Philadelphia. Did that extra day’s work affect them the next round against the Pacers? Maybe, maybe not.