An hour before tipoff of Game 2 between the Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers at Madison Square Garden on Monday, backup Sixers guard Buddy Hield is sitting at his locker.

Hield didnt want to speak to the media not while he was preparing for the second of a seven-game first-round playoff series. But he said one word while hunched over, holding a bunch of socks in one hand and his phone in the other, eyes peeled on the projected displaying film on the opponent he was about to face.

Adjust.

The playoffs are all about adjustments.

The right adjustment can swing an entire series in a teams favor, regardless of a perceived talent discrepancy between the two squads.

The wrong adjustment? Well, the wrong adjustment can send a team into a spiral. The wrong adjustment could cost a team a series, a head coach his job.

Adjustments will be abundant in a chess match between two teams with injured stars and high playoff hopes.

The Knicks are on this playoff run without Julius Randle, a three-time All-Star who suffered a season-ending dislocated right shoulder in January.

And for the 76ers, both All-Stars Joel Embiid (meniscus) and Tyrese Maxey (ill) were questionable and listed as game-time decisions before both decided to play through the adversity in Game 2.

I mean listen: I think that you get into the series after Game 1 for sure, said Sixers head coach Nick Nurse. You see a lot of the things that are happening. You can only guess what the coverages will be, what the matchups are gonna be, and all that kind of stuff. So you certainly have a lot of information going into the next game about where youre gonna move your pieces, if theres any matchups you want to change, any schemes you want to change, all that kind of stuff.

You just kind of move the guesses to some more of the factual information youve been presented, and then see how that affects what youre gonna do the next game.

Isaiah Hartenstein, too, is at his locker, a 90-second stroll from where Hield uttered the word adjust.

Hartenstein laughs. This is a question for the head coach, not for the player.

The playoffs are not just about adjustments, but also anticipation: Can you anticipate what the opposing coach is going to do and have a plan of attack ready for it?

For head coach Tom Thibodeau, much of the work leading into this series had been done long before the Knicks knew the victor between the Play-In Tournament matchup between the 76ers and Miami Heat on Wednesday.

As the Sixers and Heat battled for the right to play the Knicks in the first round, Thibodeaus staff spent time finding similarities between the two potential opponents in order to gain a head start for Game 1.

You do it all year long, so you dont have to adjust, Thibodeau said ahead of tipoff on Monday. So, same thing you do with your preparation, you dont change. You analyze the game that you, the things you did well, the things you have to improve upon and get ready for the next one.

Under Thibodeau, the Knicks have their foundational principles: They want to defend hard, shoot a ton of threes, crash the glass and protect the ball. If they do these four things, they believe they can sustain both a poor shooting night of their own or a furious opponent-scoring run.

We come in, we watch film. We have our principles of how we play, Hartenstein said pregame. An adjustment is always going to be made, but at the end of the day, weve got to stick to our principles and just kind of getter better as a team at what we want to do.

Game 1 gave both teams plenty of adjustments to make moving forward.

The Knicks, for example, couldnt stop Tyrese Maxey, who put his superior speed on display to the tune of 33 points in Game 1.

The Sixers found success defending Jalen Brunson, who shot just 8-of-26 from the field for 22 points but to do so, they helped off of Josh Hart, who hit four threes, including a trio of treys in the fourth quarter to help put the Sixers away late.

The Knicks also got some help from Deuce McBride, Bojan Bogdanovic and Mitchell Robinson, who combined to score 42 points off the bench in Game 1, while the Sixers got little else from players not named Embiid and Maxey.

Hield didnt score at all in Game 1 and missed each of the two shots he took in 11 minutes off the bench for the Sixers. The Sixers picked him up specifically for a scoring punch off the bench in a playoff matchup like this one.

Its why hes muttering one word at his locker adjust and why every series has unforeseen twists and turns, regardless of whos suiting up on a given night.

Read more:

Knicks-Sixers playoff is series a chess match rife with adjustments: 'You see a lot of the things that are happening' - New York Daily News