The Post branded Joel Embiid the “Most Hated Man in New York.” The electric Garden crowd called him far worse.
But Embiid and his 76ers had the last laugh and the win — one that salvaged their season, at least for a while.
Philadelphia pulled out a come-from-behind, 112-106, overtime victory over the Knicks in Game 5 of this first-round series Tuesday night.
The Sixers staved off elimination and did it with the help of their star center, even if he was nowhere near healthy.
Embiid started despite being questionable with a sore left knee and migraines, which kept him holed up in the team hotel and missing the morning shootaround. And the sellout crowd of 19,812 greeted him with profanity, invectives and all sorts of vituperations.
It didn’t bother him a bit.
Embiid had a triple-double, finishing with 19 points, 16 rebounds, 11 assists and five blocks.
Granted, he was held to roughly half of his gaudy average (35.0 in this series, 34.7 for the season), shot just 7-for-19 and committed nine turnovers, narrowly missing a dubious quadruple-double. But his marathon effort was a victorious one.
“[He handles it] pretty well. I think he’s played really, really well in this series considering; I think he’s played really, really well,” Sixers coach Nick Nurse said beforehand. “I don’t know what’s feeding him to do it. I think he loves competing. He wants to win. I think he’s played well.”
The Garden crowd had showered him with chants of, “F— Embiid! F— Embiid” in Game 2. Cheap shots to Jalen Brunson’s face and Mitchell Robinson’s legs in Philadelphia elevated him into Reggie Miller or Denis Potvin territory as far as Garden hate.
But seeing the way he waved the crowd on, that doesn’t seem to bother him. In fact, he added another Flagrant-1 on Tuesday, after a review of his swipe across the face of Brunson on a drive in overtime.
“I think everybody enjoys it, because it’s competitive. It’s fun,” Buddy Hield told The Post before the game. “He wants to compete in these types of environments. And I feel like when you get in the moment of it, it doesn’t affect you. You look at [Game 2], a couple calls didn’t go our way. I don’t think the crowd really bother him.”
In Philadelphia’s Game 4 loss, Embiid scored just one of his 27 points in the fourth quarter on 0-of-5 shooting. And he took the offense with him. The Sixers missed their final 11 shots in that defeat, four by Embiid, including a layup.
But desperate times called for desperate measures — and extended minutes. Nurse played Embiid every second of the third quarter and all but 1:12 in the fourth. He looked gassed and had just two points on 1-of-4 shooting with four turnovers.
But he had four points and two boards in overtime.
Down 102-100 in overtime, the 88 percent free-throw shooter made just one of two from the foul line. But he followed by blocking Josh Hart’s layup attempt to lead to a Kelly Oubre Jr. go-ahead dunk.
Then he stole the ball from Brunson, and converted a three-point play himself for a 106-102 edge with 1:40 left.
