“The cool thing right now isn’t the Knicks.”
“Me, I’ve never lost to the Knicks since I’ve been in the league.”
“City is under new management”
If any of those quotes sound familiar, they were said by players, fans, and even part-owners about the Brooklyn Nets in the last few seasons. When they got the clean sweep on June 30, 2019, it broke everyone’s brains to think that a few shiny objects for our neighbors across the East River would change decades of the orange and blue being entrenched in the city’s
basketball culture.
Those shiny objects, of course, played just 74 games with each other. If you want to include the hilariously dysfunctional tenure of James Harden, they played even fewer games as a collective. The Nets completed one of the most talented Big 3’s in NBA history on January 13, 2021. Just 757 days later, all three of them were gone.
While all three of them were in Brooklyn, they dominated the matchups with the Knicks. In those 757 days, the Nets went 9-0 against the Knicks in the midst of a prolonged 14-3 stretch. Even while they sat in street clothes, the sheer difference between the two teams was great enough to result in embarrassing loss after embarrassing loss.
Then, Nic Claxton just had to run his mouth. Since then, the Knicks are 11-0 against the Nets, as they’ve emerged into contention and the Nets have fallen apart. Stunningly, six years after the clean sweep, the Knicks and Nets have swapped places.
The Knicks entered this one as 15.5-point favorites, which is tied with a game against the Wizards last year for the largest spread in a Knicks game since they were 17-point favorites against the Pistons in March 2024. It’s the largest favorite they’ve been against the Nets since at least 2006-07 (according to Covers.com) and just a surface look at this game could tell you how it was going to go.
The Knicks would score the first eight points of the game and force Jordi Fernandez to call a timeout after going up 10-3 in just over two and a half minutes. The Nets would eventually get as close as five points, making it 21-16, and that was as close as they would ever get. The last time they trailed by single digits was with two minutes left in the first quarter. Drake Powell fouled Jalen Brunson on a three-pointer to make it 35-22 on a four-point play and they never looked back.
Kudos to Michael Porter Jr., who is one of several players across the Association who have never seen a shot he doesn’t like. He played well in the first half, scoring 22 points on 8-for-14 shooting and powering the Nets’ 40-point second quarter that was quite literally their only contribution to this game. No, seriously.
Nets in the second:
40 points, 13-19 FG (68.4%), 7-11 3pt (63.6%)
Nets in the other three quarters combined:
58 points, 20-63 FG (31.7%), 7-34 3pt (20.6%)
While the Nets made shots to try and keep the game in range after being blitzed 40-22 in the opening quarter, they could not play defense. They are dead last in defensive rating with a ridiculously awful 126.6 DRtg. Only the Wizards (122.1) and Pelicans (120.4) are even in their area code. The Knicks kept cooking in the second quarter, as Jordan Clarkson looked to up MPJ in the “bizarre shot selection derby”.
The two teams traded baskets all quarter, combining for 77 points. When halftime hit, the Nets were only down 15 in a 77-62 affair. I’ll be honest, I was a bit uncomfortable with the relative ease with which Brooklyn was scoring, and while it wouldn’t matter if the Knicks kept scoring, you would’ve loved to see a concerted effort to put the game away early and get the starters out.
That’s exactly what they did. The first ten minutes of the third quarter saw the Knicks outscore the Nets 30-8. The faucet turned off on the Brooklyn end, but the home team kept lighting it up. Another six treys were hit, balanced scoring all around, and the Knicks opened up a 37-point lead at one point.
A last-second floater by Jalen Brunson made it 112-79 after three. At that point, he and Mikal Bridges exited the floor for the final time, while OG Anunoby and Karl-Anthony Towns got a few minutes to statpad to start the fourth. Eventually, both would be removed in about four minutes, giving way to the garbage time brigade.
The Knicks could’ve seriously challenged for 140, maybe even 150 points, but the benchwarmers aren’t the most adept offensively. It was an extremely quiet day for Deuce McBride, which didn’t help. Ultimately, the highlight of the last few minutes was probably Mo Diawara showing off his range with a three and a long two.
The Knicks have won a few games comfortably on this homestand, but they hadn’t been able to empty the bench like this in either of them because they let go of the rope too soon. Both the Bulls and Wizards trailed by 25 at one point, but cut it to under 15, forcing the starters to stay in past the halfway point of the fourth quarter.
The Nets scored fewer points in the second half than they did in the second quarter, and are the first team to be held to less than 100 by the Knicks this season. They did not have Cam Thomas, who definitely could’ve helped in the shotmaking department with his hatred of the Knicks, but this was par for the course. More on that in a bit.
For the Knicks, Bodega KAT had 28-12 on 10-for-17. He once again did not make a three and is down to 32.6% from behind the arc this year. At some point, these shots have to go down, right?
Wingstop combined to score 35 points on 12-for-19 from the field and 8-for-11 from three. Anunoby is shooting 43.8% from deep, Bridges 50%. That’s as good as it gets.
Brunson scored just 19 points, but was once again not needed. He was plus-36 in 27 minutes. In fact, all the Knicks’ starters were incredible in that department, including the one, the only, Mitchell Robinson.
Big Mitch had a solid stat line of eight points, eight rebounds, two blocks, and two steals in 17 minutes. He won Defensive Player of the Game. But the most notable part of his statline? He was plus-40. There have been a bunch of games with a plus-minus like that, but Robinson has the distinction of the least amount of minutes played in a plus-40 game, breaking a record set by Lu Dort (18:35) in January 2024 by nearly two whole minutes (16:36).
One postgame media observation: Mike Brown is just inventing stats. In listening to his statement on the postgame show, he mentioned numbers such as “sprays” and “verticalities”. Even as a guy who tries to stay up to date with the advanced stat lingo, this sounded like another language. He’s straight-up reading off a stat sheet during the statement, which is awesome.
Ultimately, this piece could’ve been about 25 words. The Knicks beat the hell out of the Nets for the 11th time in a row. This is a Nets team that, aside from MPJ and Thomas, is a bunch of ifs. There are pieces like Claxton, Noah Clowney, and Day’Ron Sharpe, but these are role players at best on winning teams. Tonight, they got a blistering 3-for-27 from the field (1-16 3pt) out of Clowney, Tyrese Martin, and Jalen Wilson, which just won’t play.
Ultimately, if the Nets are ever going to turn it around, they need multiple draft picks to hit and hit big. They are in the post-Melo, late-2010s Knicks phase. I don’t know if Cam Thomas is their Kristaps Porzingis, but the parallels are uncanny between this team and the 2018-19 and 2019-20 Knicks. A bunch of draft picks, several from foreign countries, that have been highly criticized and panned, need to pan out for this franchise to go anywhere.
Of their five first-round draft picks, for a team that might challenge 65 or 70 losses, only two played. The other three were in the G-League. That’s extremely odd, regardless of how raw they might be. Drake Powell actually looked pretty good on Sunday night, and Egor Demin showed flashes, but they have a long way to go.
The disgruntled Ja Morant is coming to town on Tuesday night with the 4-7 Memphis Grizzlies, as the Knicks will go for five in a row.
