‘Amazing’ Maxey’s clutch late 3s lift Sixers over Knicks to force Game 6

NEW YORK — After the New York Knicks completed a miraculous comeback in Game 2 of their epic first-round series against the Philadelphia 76ers at Madison Square Garden last week, Sixers guard Tyrese Maxey vowed to make up for his turnover and missed shot in the closing moments that helped cost his team that game.

Tuesday night, with Philadelphia’s season seemingly over, Maxey not only made up for it — he somehow did something even more absurd.

Thanks to his seven points in the final 28.9 seconds of regulation — back-to-back 3-pointers, the first of which he was fouled on by Mitchell Robinson for a four-point play — the 76ers erased a six-point lead inside the final 30 seconds and went on to claim a 112-106 overtime victory in Game 5, somehow sending this series back to Philadelphia with the Knicks up 3-2.

“What was going through my mind was trying to survive,” said Maxey, who had 46 points in 52 minutes. “Our season is on the line. I trust my work. I trust what I’ve done all my life, and I just tried to get to a spot, raise up and knock that shot down.”

What made this game all the more remarkable — in a series that’s been chock full of wild moments and momentum swings through five games — is that it was the absolute inverse of what happened in Game 2, when the Knicks stormed back from down five inside the final 30 seconds to win in regulation.

Before these playoffs, there had been only three games in the past 25 years that had seen a team recover from a deficit of at least five points inside the final 30 seconds and win the game. But after Maxey’s heroics Tuesday night, it’s now happened twice in the same series in a 10-day span.

“Just a tough way to lose a ballgame,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “We had a lead. We’ve got to play tougher with the lead. We fouled in a situation that we didn’t want to foul in, and then Maxey makes a big shot.

“So, we’ve got to do better.”

Just as it was for the 76ers in Game 2, for 47 minutes and 30 seconds, it seemed like the Knicks had done more than enough to win the series and advance to the Eastern Conference semifinals. New York hasn’t closed out a series on its home floor in 25 years — since Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals in 1999 — and hasn’t won a series in back-to-back playoffs since advancing to the Eastern Conference finals in 2000.

When Deuce McBride hit a jumper with 28.9 seconds to go to put New York up by 6, Sixers coach Nick Nurse called a timeout and for the next three minutes the sellout crowd was making so much noise the press box was actually shaking.

“It was tough,” Nurse told ESPN, when asked what the mood in the huddle was at the time. “Other than I just said, ‘It’s still a two-possession game.’ We had a play called to try to get Tyrese a 3, and they ran it.”

Then, Nurse smiled.

“Everything was cool after that, right?”

One could say that.

Still, even after all of the events inside those final 30 seconds –…