Tuesday closed the first round's most emotionally concentrated night. San Antonio eliminated Portland 114-95 — Wembanyama's first playoff series win, the Spurs' first since 2017 — in a game that was over by halftime. Joel Embiid delivered 33 points in his second game back from an appendectomy, dragging Philadelphia back from 13 down in the third quarter with a performance his teammates could barely keep pace with, and the Sixers kept their season alive 113-97 at TD Garden. And Jalen Brunson poured in 39 points at Madison Square Garden in the most complete individual performance of the series — the Knicks controlling from the first minute, never allowing Atlanta closer than 10 after the opening quarter, routing the Hawks 126-97 to take a 3-2 series lead. Tuesday belonged to the stars who showed up when everything was on the line.

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San Antonio Spurs 114, Portland Trail Blazers 95

This was never a game. San Antonio opened on a 17-4 blitz fueled by Julian Champagnie's three early threes, pushed the lead to 28 midway through the second quarter, and let Portland claw it back to 20 at the break before closing the door for good in the second half. The Trail Blazers got within nine with eight minutes remaining on an 11-0 run, but Wembanyama — who had been doing his damage on both ends all night — swatted Avdija's floater off the top of the backboard in the game's final minutes and Fox locked down whatever remaining oxygen Portland had left. San Antonio never trailed. The series was not as close as the scoreline suggests.

Wembanyama finished with 17 points, 14 rebounds, and 6 blocks — a quieter scoring night than his Game 4 spectacle but his defensive presence was what it always is: immovable, suffocating, and ultimately what Portland could never solve. Fox led all scorers with 21 points and 13 decisive fourth-quarter points that ended the Blazers' late run. Champagnie's 19 points were the offensive surprise — a first-half eruption that put Portland's defense in impossible rotations before the game was three minutes old. Harper added 17 in his series finale, capping a rookie postseason that has permanently altered the perception of what this Spurs team is capable of.

Portland's Avdija finished with 22 points but shot 1-of-6 from three. Henderson was held to five points — a harsh finish for a player who had 31 in Game 2's steal and was genuinely San Antonio's most difficult individual problem all series. Holiday, Grant, and the supporting cast gave the Blazers everything available in the margin. It wasn't enough. The Spurs won three straight to close this series despite losing Wembanyama to a concussion in Game 2, coming back from 15 down at halftime in Game 4, and playing the entire middle of the series on the road in a hostile building. That's not a fluke. That's a team.

San Antonio advances to the Western Conference semifinals for the first time since 2017. They'll face the winner of the Denver-Minnesota series. Wembanyama's postgame walkoff, with the Frost Bank Center crowd roaring, was the image of Tuesday night.

SAS 114 · POR 95

Philadelphia 76ers 113, Boston Celtics 97

The game had a 13-point, third-quarter deficit for Philadelphia. It had Embiid going to the locker room midway through the period with a grimace and a limp. It had the real, credible possibility that Boston was about to close out the series at home on a Tuesday night in front of a crowd that had every reason to celebrate. Then Embiid came back, posted up Nikola Vucevic over and over again with a consistency Mazzulla had no clean defensive counter for, and orchestrated a 12-0 run that flipped a three-point Boston lead into a 15-point Philadelphia advantage before the fourth was over.

Embiid was remarkable. Seventeen days after an appendectomy, in his second game back, he attacked the Celtics' center trio of Vucevic, Luka Garza, and Neemias Queta with physical, decisive post-ups — working in the mid-range, making Maxey passes off double teams, and absorbing contact without flinching. He had 13 points in the second quarter, 10 more in the third despite the locker room trip, and finished with 33 points, 4 rebounds, and 8 assists on 12-of-23 shooting. When he's healthy enough to dominate Vucevic for 34 minutes in a road elimination game, Philadelphia is a different team than the one that lost Games 3 and 4 by a combined 52 points.

Maxey added 25 points and 10 rebounds, more aggressive than his Game 4 disappearance — he scored 13 in the second quarter and followed Embiid's lead in the fourth rather than deferring to the flow. George contributed 16 points and 9 rebounds and 7 assists as the connector. Grimes scored 18 off the bench, a career playoff-high, hitting big threes and keeping Atlanta's — sorry, Boston's — defense honest at the perimeter. For the Celtics, Tatum had 24 points and 16 rebounds but couldn't manufacture the fourth-quarter response the building needed. Brown added 22. Boston shot 30 percent from three — the reverse of what their three-point dominance has looked like all series.

The Sixers now trail 3-2. Game 6 is Thursday in Philadelphia. If they win, Game 7 is Saturday in Boston. It's worth noting: the Celtics are 32-0 all time when leading a playoff series 3-1. One of those dominoes has to fall.

PHI 113 · BOS 97

New York Knicks 126, Atlanta Hawks 97

The Knicks came to Madison Square Garden having found an answer for McCollum in Game 4 — force the ball out of his hands, rotate aggressively, make Dyson Daniels beat them — and they ran the same blueprint more effectively than ever on Tuesday. McCollum finished with six points. The lead was never below double digits after the first quarter. Brunson scored 39 on 15-of-23 shooting with eight assists and one turnover in a vintage performance that was at its most devastating in the fourth quarter, when he scored 17 personal points — jab-stepping defenders off-balance, pulling up from three over recovering guards, getting to the line in traffic — and turned what was an 18-point lead into an insurmountable 32-point blowout.

The Towns-Brunson axis was the engine from tip-off. Towns had 16 points, 14 rebounds, and 6 assists in a complementary performance that kept Atlanta honest when they tried to shade entirely toward Brunson — drawing doubles, kicking out to Anunoby for corner threes, posting up the smaller Hawk forwards repeatedly. Anunoby added 17 points and 10 rebounds in the physical, two-way role that makes New York's defense so difficult to manipulate. The Knicks held a 48-27 advantage on the boards and a 60-42 advantage in paint points. The margin told a story of a bigger, more physical team that had finally locked in its defensive scheme.

Atlanta's Jalen Johnson had 18 points and 10 rebounds and 6 assists as the only Hawk who consistently found solutions against New York's rotations. Daniels scored 17. McCollum's six-point night was the tactical story — the Knicks took away the exact thing that made Games 2 and 3 viable for Atlanta, and without McCollum's creation late, the Hawks had no mechanism for closing the gap once it widened. The series now returns to Atlanta for Game 6 Thursday, where both outcomes remain possible. Atlanta won both games at State Farm Arena in this series. But nothing about Tuesday suggested the Knicks are a team running out of answers.

NYK 126 · ATL 97

Tuesday offered the clearest summary of where the first round stands after eleven days of basketball: the teams built for the long haul are asserting themselves, and the moments that have defined this postseason belong to the players who refused to let their season end.

Embiid's two-game return arc — from 26 points in a blowout loss in Game 4 to 33 points dragging Philadelphia out of a 13-point third-quarter deficit in Game 5 — is the most compelling individual story of the first round. He is playing on a body that medically should not be in a playoff game, and he is the best player on the floor for stretches in every game he appears. Brunson's 39-point demolition is the reminder that the Knicks, when fully operational, are not the team that gave away Games 2 and 3. And Wembanyama's first series win — quiet by his own elevated standards, a 14-rebound, 6-block defensive statement after 17 points — closed the chapter on a first round that established him as the most important player in whatever the Spurs become next.

Stud of the Day: Joel Embiid, Philadelphia 76ers — 33 points, 8 assists, went to the locker room mid-third-quarter with a limp, came back, posted up Nikola Vucevic repeatedly, and orchestrated a 12-0 run that flipped a 13-point deficit into a 15-point lead. Seventeen days post-appendectomy. In Boston. In an elimination game. There is no clean rational explanation for what Embiid is doing on a body that medically shouldn't be doing it.

Dud of the Night: CJ McCollum, Atlanta Hawks — Six points. In a game where he'd made the last two Atlanta victories possible. The Knicks adjusted, took the ball out of his hands, and McCollum had no answer for a defense that had figured him out. The Hawks held a 2-1 lead in this series not long ago. Now they trail 2-3 and head to State Farm Arena needing a win to stay alive, without the thing that made them viable — McCollum in the fourth quarter.