As simple as it should have been.
The Knicks took care of business against the tanking Nets, peppering their rival with a balanced attack in a wire-to-wire conquest, 134-98.
Karl-Anthony Towns led the scoring with 28 points for the Knicks (6-3), who won their fourth straight game while improving to 6-0 at home.
Just like last week against the terrible Wizards, Mike Brown’s team did not respond to the competition.
They crushed it.
The Knicks went on an 8-0 run after tipoff.
They led by 15 at the break and 37 in the third quarter.
A steady defeat.
Towns also had 12 rebounds. Jalen Brunson and OG Anunoby each scored 19 points in less than 30 minutes apiece.
Mitchell Robinson played just 16 minutes and his impact was remarkable: the Knicks defeated Brooklyn by 40 points when the center was on the floor.
Once labeled as a rivalry, this intra-borough competition has lost all its luster, the juice of a steamed grape.
Opponents Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and Mikhail Prokhorov are long gone.
They’ve been replaced in Brooklyn by a young, stealthy team, built to tank by the Teflon Sean Marks.
The Nets (1-9) are targeting a first overall draft pick and have done the right thing by handing the keys to defensive players like Michael Porter Jr. and Cam Thomas (who was injured in Sunday’s game).
The only interesting matchup at MSG involved the head coaches, with Brooklyn’s Jordi Fernandez facing off against his mentor Mike Brown.
The two were together in Cleveland and Sacramento, with Fernandez as a substitute.
Jason Szenes/New York Post
“Great young coach,” Brown said of Fernandez. “He’s obviously got a young team, so they’ve got some things to figure out. Every time I get a chance to see him, I always enjoy seeing him. But I want to kick his ass.”
Brown followed with a beating.
The Knicks scored 77 points in the first half, with five players in double figures at the break.
Brown, who had three days off to prepare for the Nets, craves a high-octane, fast-paced offense — and that developed easily against the Nets.
“It was great (to have three days off). A lot of teams played five games in a short period of time to start the season,” Brown said. “Any time you can give your guys some rest and work on supporting some things that you can get better at, you try to take advantage of that. So that’s what we did, we tried to clean up some of the things that we were trying to teach our guys on both sides of the game. We introduced some new things. And we tried to give our guys some rest as well.”
The Knicks also had extra rest in the fourth quarter, with all starters pulled before the halfway point.
Easy night work.
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