The Nets had already been through ugly this season. Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden managed to find a new level anyway.
Brooklyn’s 120-66 loss to the Knicks was the kind of final score that makes you check your phone twice just to be sure it is real. It was a 54-point avalanche, the second-worst loss in franchise history, and it left the Nets wearing the kind of night that stings and lingers.
The Knicks played like a team trying to wash away their own skid, and Brooklyn played like a team that never made it out of the tunnel. And yet, inside the Nets locker room afterward, the focus wasn’t on pointing fingers or spinning excuses. It was on owning it, absorbing it and dragging themselves forward.
“Tonight was even worse, and I’m the one responsible for it,” head coach Jordi Fernández said. “Players have to move on, find a way to. This is a tough one but show up the next day and have positive energy and work and get better and go out there and compete. I have to help them better.”
It wasn’t a one-off line meant to end the interview. Fernández kept going, blunt about where the Nets have been lately and how far they have drifted from anything close to their standard.
“In the last 12 games, we’ve been poor defensively, poor offensively, and that falls on me,” Fernández said. “Players are not responsible for it, so I’ve got to make sure they understand the values that we have and how we want to play. We’ll work to get that.”
The Nets have heard the numbers. They have lived them. But Wednesday’s loss made them impossible to ignore because the Knicks weren’t just hitting shots. They were controlling the tone, the floor, the glass and the paint. Brooklyn didn’t stand a chance. They didn’t consistently attack the teeth of the defense. They didn’t create any physical pushback that would make a home team flinch.
“Zero second-chance points,” Fernández said. “We have rules to go get those boards… They were the most physical team, they were the best team out there, and we’ve just got to learn from it and move on. Like I said, I’ve got a lot to figure out.”
That’s the thing about a blowout like this. It is not just one bad night. It forces every small issue into the light at the same time. Physicality. Communication. Confidence. The ability to respond once the game slips. The ability to respond after the season faded a while ago.
Even as Fernández took the blame, his players didn’t let him carry it alone. Rookie Drake Powell spoke with the kind of straightforward honesty that’s rare, especially from someone this early in his career. He called it what it was.
“The first thing was just mainly a fight that’s got to come to play every night,” Powell said. “Otherwise, in the NBA, competitive league, you can get blown out like football. I think just the lack of energy that we came out with. I think it starts on defense when we’re playing on the road. You’ve got to make sure your defense travels, and I don’t think that did tonight.”
Powell said the message afterward didn’t come from one place. The loudest voices belonged to the vets.
That matters, because the Nets can’t afford to let a game like Wednesday turn into a week-long fog. They play again Friday. The schedule doesn’t care about embarrassment, and the league is too unforgiving to sulk.
Powell didn’t pretend he saw it coming either, which might have been the most unsettling part. This didn’t feel like a team sleepwalking through a trip to Manhattan. It felt like a team that got hit and stayed down.
When Fernández took full responsibility, Powell pushed back, gently but firmly, the way a teammate does when the moment calls for it.
“I 100 percent don’t agree,” Powell said. “I think we’re the ones that are out there playing, making decisions, and I think it’s ultimately on us as a team.”
Noah Clowney did not dress it up either. The forward pointed to the way the Knicks approached it, and the way the Nets did not match it.
“I think everybody’s on the same page that we shouldn’t be losing by 60,” Clowney said.
That is the truth Brooklyn has to sit with now. Not just that they got beaten, but that they got beaten in the areas that are supposed to travel: effort, physicality and fight. The Nets can talk about plans and process, and Fernández still believes in both.
That’s the only way forward after a night like Wednesday. No shortcuts. No excuses. Just showing up the next day and doing it again.
“I believe in the players. I believe in the coaches, and this doesn’t stop the plan that we have,” Fernández said. “It’s just obviously a tough experience to go through, but we will be better. Me, the first one.”