The Nets and Knicks aren’t just five miles apart.
And the East River.
They are on opposite sides of the basketball world.
For the Knicks and Mike Brown, it’s all about reaching the NBA Finals.
Rebuilding Nets isn’t about winning games, it’s about winning the lottery.
That gap was painfully put on display in the Garden on Sunday.
There is losing.
There is even refueling.
But then there is shame.
This was the last, the Nets were caned 134-98 in front of a sellout crowd of 19,812 at the Garden.
“Just not good enough,” said Jordi Fernández. “We want more and we want better. I will be the first to demand it. And if we don’t get it, then of course I will be the first to take the blame. And I have to look at myself in the mirror.”
There were plenty of recriminations to be made after their worst loss of the season, and the most lopsided since their record 59-point loss to the Clippers on Jan. 15.
The Nets shot 54.5 percent, making 17 of 37 from deep.
They couldn’t get back in transition and trailed by 18 in the first quarter.
It never got better.
Trailing 77-62 at halftime, the Nets allowed the first 12 points of the second half but never answered.
“It just wasn’t good enough,” Fernández said.
“You’re down 15 going into the third. Obviously the first few possessions there are extremely important. They make a run, and yeah, that’s deflating. That’s not what you want. It happened and we have to learn from it. We all have to grow very, very quickly because this is not what we want moving forward.”
With Cam Thomas out with another left hamstring strain, Michael Porter Jr. 25 points.
But Noah Clowney, who entered the game averaging 17.0 points over the past three games starting at power forward, had just four on 1-for-9 shooting and went 0-for-7 from deep.
The offense was bad, but the defense was even worse, giving up a fast break layup – after a made free throw.
“These are the situations where we want to grow, where we want to have attention, a level of attention and communication for all these things. And that’s not happening,” Fernández said. “Obviously I can’t go out there and coach every play and every action.
“I know our guys have the ability to be much better, and we have very high expectations for our guys in how they work and how they compete. And there’s a lot of room for improvement. So that’s the exciting part. From now through Game 20 through 30, 40 and all the way to 82, we want to see improvement. So right now we’re in a good spot because it should be easy to improve on this.”
The Nets were dominated inside, with Karl-Anthony Towns having 28 points and 12 rebounds.
Jalen Brunson had 19 points and seven assists against a Nets defense that was in terrible disarray.
Lottery pick Egor Dëmin had 10 points, four rebounds and three assists and looked more comfortable in the pick-and-roll.
Fellow rookie Drake Powell made an unexpected burst with 15 points, going 3-for-3 from deep.
“We shot ourselves in the foot just the way we started,” said Powell, who added that Fernández’s postgame message was succinct. “Just to stick together. When adversity strikes, you see who you really are and what you are made of.”
Day’Ron Sharpe left Sunday’s game with left hamstring tightness.
The Nets offered no timeline or clarity on the severity of the injury.
“No, there has been no testing. It’s just tightness. So we will do our evaluation and do whatever we need to do,” Fernández said. “So we’ll see. But he played extremely hard.”
Sharpe had 10 points and six rebounds in 12:11 against the Knicks.
He played the final three minutes of the third quarter and did not return for the fourth.
#Tanking #Nets #good #Knicks #embarrassment #plenty #blame