Pride was the point Friday night at Barclays Center. The Knicks had won the first three meetings by an average of 34.3 points. The Nets walked in knowing what the series had become. So, Brooklyn responded the only way it could, by turning the game into a grind, by dragging the Knicks into a mud fight, and by refusing to let another night turn into a difficult lesson.
It still wasn’t enough.
“I wanted that sh-t so fu–ing bad,” Josh Minott said. “Ever since we’ve been here, it’s like every game’s an away game. Tonight was just the night to really just stick it to everybody. Just as an organization and as a team to show people that we got shit here. Sea of blue, sea of orange, every game we play, a sea of the other team.”
The Nets lost 93-92 and saw their losing streak reach six games as the Knicks completed the season sweep, but the night didn’t read like the previous three. Brooklyn defended, forced turnovers and made the Knicks work for nearly everything. It just didn’t survive the Knicks’ third-quarter punch and Jalen Brunson’s closing time heroics.
Minott was the reason it was a game at all. He led Brooklyn with 22 points and went 6-for-9 from deep, stacking buckets and giving the Nets a pulse. Ziaire Williams added 17 points in his eighth start of the season, and the Nets got just enough early offense to match an effort level that, for once, never dipped.
Karl-Anthony Towns paced the Knicks with 26 points and 15 rebounds. Brunson added 17 points on 7-for-19 shooting, plus five rebounds and eight assists. And when the game tightened late, he and Brunson were the difference.
“Good. Very aggressive. Very active,” Nets head coach Jordi Fernández said of Minott’s career shooting night. “He took advantage of his minutes. It was good to see heading into the summer.”
Nolan Traoré coughed it up twice in the opening minutes, but he made up for it by scoring the first basket for either team, a fastbreak floater after a two-minute scoring drought to open the game. The Knicks came in on a four-game win streak, the Nets on a five-game skid, but you wouldn’t have known it early. By the 7:51 mark, Brooklyn had held the Knicks to 1-for-8 shooting, hit four of its first nine shots and capped a 7-0 run with a Danny Wolf 3-pointer that put the Nets up 9-3 and forced a Mike Brown timeout.
From there, Brooklyn kept leaning into its defense like it was the only thing holding the game together, because it was. The Nets went 10 deep in the first quarter and limited the Knicks to 4-for-19 shooting. Brooklyn knocked down four 3-pointers and carried a 22-14 lead into the second. It forced nine turnovers in the opening period, and Minott punctuated it by putting OG Anunoby in a blender and burying a step-back 3-pointer at the buzzer.
Minott carried that momentum into the second quarter with another quick bucket, giving him 10 points in his first six minutes on a perfect 4-for-4 start. You kept waiting for the Knicks to take the wheel the way they have in this matchup. It didn’t happen in the first half. Williams and Wolf came alive on offense. Ochai Agbaji picked up where Minott left off with another offensive punch off the bench. Brooklyn led by as many as 13 and kept forcing the Knicks into long, contested jumpers.
Brooklyn led 50-44 at halftime after holding the Knicks to 31.7% shooting and forcing 13 turnovers. The Nets still didn’t have an answer for Towns, who scored 13 in the first half, and they couldn’t keep the Knicks off the line, where they went 14-for-20 while Brooklyn went 4-for-4. But Minott’s 13 points, Williams’ 10 and Wolf’s eight balanced it out. Outside of Towns, no other Knick scored more than seven before the break.
Anunoby opened the third quarter by establishing deep position on Wolf and throwing down a two-handed dunk, a play that sparked a 7-0 run and gave the Knicks a 51-50 lead with 10:35 left. It was the Knicks’ first lead since it was 3-2. Brooklyn didn’t fold, even in its fifth straight game without Michael Porter Jr. The teams traded buckets and stops. The game turned physical. For a stretch, it was a real war.
And then the Knicks finally separated. They closed the third on an 11-0 run, won the quarter 31-15, and took a 75-65 lead into the fourth, their largest advantage of the night. Even then, the Knicks were shooting just 41.7% and sitting on 17 turnovers. Brooklyn was still making them work.
“We just stayed together and understood it wasn’t over,” Minott said.
But the Nets had one more punch left. After the Knicks pushed the lead to 14 early in the fourth, Minott regained his rhythm and scored nine straight points to pull Brooklyn within eight. Malachi Smith then buried a 3-pointer to cut it to five with 7:41 left, forcing Brown into another timeout. Brooklyn kept coming out of it, finishing a 15-0 burst capped by an Agbaji transition slam that put the Nets back on top 85-84 with 5:20 left.
That’s when the difference between the teams showed up. The Knicks had Brunson. The Nets didn’t have a closer of that caliber. Brunson scored on back-to-back possessions while Brooklyn came up empty. Towns laid it in with 1:04 left to restore a five-point lead, and the Knicks held on from there, even after he missed two free throws in the final seconds.
Brooklyn held the Knicks to 40.8% shooting and forced 22 turnovers, but it still couldn’t avoid a 14th straight loss in the rivalry. Next, the Nets head west to face the Sacramento Kings on Sunday in the first game of a four-game trip.