“Everybody on the floor was trying to call a timeout, myself included. Nico [Batum], the coach on the sideline, but they didn’t give it to us. But forget about the timeouts. There was a bunch of fouls. Like I said, that’s [bleeping] unacceptable.”

Nurse’s view was much the same.

“We look at getting it in quick, I call a timeout, referee looked right at me, ignored me,” the Sixers coach said. “It went in to Tyrese. I called timeout again. Then the melee started.”

It’s impossible to judge the refs’ decision-making without being down on the court and witnessing the sequence of events in real time. It isn’t impossible to say that Maxey was fouled before and after the inbounds pass. The whistle should have blown.

It didn’t, and the Sixers have to live with the ramifications. You can’t blame a loss like this solely on the officiating. The Knicks played more than well enough to win.

The Sixers know this. Deep down inside, they have to. The first two games of this series have shown that the Knicks are very much for real. They are exhausting, maddening, infuriating, soul-sucking, a relentless drain on mind, body and spirit. They are a team that any hard-core basketball fan would love to be able to root for. They will be America’s team against the Bucks and Celtics.

If the Sixers can somehow rally to prevent it, they will have accomplished the greatest feat of the Embiid era. It would be easier to believe if they had a complete team. A third scorer. Or a couple of dogs with 3-point touch like Josh Hart and Donte DiVincenzo. Or a guy off the bench like Miles McBride. They haven’t had any of those things in the first two games of this series. There is your major difference.

The Sixers do have two games at home. They have two superstars who showed they can carry a team down the stretch after getting knocked down to the mat. Thus far, it hasn’t been enough.

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