The Nets couldn’t stop Karl-Anthony Towns. They couldn’t finish at the rim. And they couldn’t break their skid against the Knicks.
Brooklyn didn’t so much get outhustled as outmuscled in a 114-104 loss to the Knicks before a sellout crowd of 19,812 at the Garden on Sunday.
Two nights after nearly pulling off an upset against the Towns-less Knicks, they had to face the star big man in the rematch. And — playing without centers Nic Claxton and Day’Ron Sharpe — it got as ugly in the paint as expected.
“Yeah, obviously it was a part of it. Definitely a problem. But I just don’t think we brought energy,” admitted Ben Simmons. “Yeah, we didn’t play how we needed to play.”
It was Simmons that was tasked with starting at center again with Claxton out, and he finished scoreless in 22 minutes of action.
Neither he nor Dorian Finney-Smith could hinder Towns, who had 26 points and 15 rebounds on 10-for-16 shooting. The Knicks star had 14 on 5-for-6 shooting in the third when the Nets saw it get blown open.
“I think the big moment in the game was when Karl started to score in that third quarter, and demand a lot of attention, and now it’s stressing us out defensively. So that’s the problem they present,” said Cam Johnson, who had a team-high 22 points, five boards, five assists and hit 4-for-7 from deep.
“On our end, we’re not concerned with [Towns],” coach Jordi Fernandez said. “We’ll play and fight against whoever is in front of us, and whether we have more centers or less centers, we’ll find a way to respond.”
The only thing Simmons has struggled at more than defending the post has been scoring at the rim. But the rest of his teammates shared his woes Sunday.
Brooklyn shot a staggeringly poor 12-for-30 in the paint. They were 9-for-20 in the restricted area and 3-for-10 in the rest of the key. Just to understand how poor that is, the league averages are 65.6 percent and 42.5 percent, respectively.
“Finishing at the rim, we should’ve been better,” Fernandez said.
“It’s been a bit of a problem. It’s also on us to just attack the paint and find shooters,” Johnson said. “Obviously we’re shorthanded with bigs, and that definitely plays a part in it. … [But] we’re going to keep attacking and trying to score in the paint, and the results will be the results. But we’re going to keep on doing it.”
Ziaire Williams’ free throws had given Brooklyn a 29-23 lead with 1:44 left in the first. But an 18-2 blitz over the next four minutes that spanned into the second put the Nets behind for good.
Ex-Net Mikal Bridges (21 points, six boards) drilled a 3-pointer to leave his old team down 41-31 with 9:28 left in the half.
Towns pushed the deficit to 14 with 17 seconds left in the third, and a Bridges turnaround made it 113-98 with 2:48 to play.
The Nets saw the ball blitzed out of the hands of Cam Thomas (16 points on 4-for-11 shooting), and got hammered 47-35 on the glass.
“You’ve got to box out,” Simmons said. “If you don’t hit somebody or you don’t know where your man is, you’re not going to get the rebound.”