The Nets and Knicks aren’t just separated by five miles.
And the East River.
They’re on opposite ends of the basketball world.
For the Knicks and Mike Brown, it’s all about reaching the NBA Finals.
The rebuilding Nets aren’t about winning games, but the lottery.
That chasm was put on painful display Sunday at the Garden.
There is losing.
There is even tanking.
But then there is embarrassing.
This was the last, the Nets suffering a 134-98 caning before a sellout crowd of 19,812 at the Garden.
“Just not good enough,” said Jordi Fernández. “We want more and we want better. I’ll be the first one to demand that. And if we don’t get it, then obviously I’m the first one that’s got to take the blame. And I’ve got to look at myself in the mirror.”
There was plenty of blame to go around after their worst loss of the season, and their most lopsided since their record 59-point loss on Jan. 15 versus the Clippers.
The Nets allowed 54.5 percent shooting, and 17-of-37 from deep.
They didn’t get back in transition and trailed by 18 in the first quarter.
It never got better.
Down 77-62 at the half, the Nets allowed the first 12 points of the second half, and never answered.
“It was just not good enough,” Fernández said.
“You’re down 15 going into the third. Obviously the first couple possessions right there are extremely important. They make a run, and yeah that’s deflating. That’s not what you want. It happened, and we’ve got to learn from it. We all need to grow really, really fast, because this is not what we want moving forward.”
With Cam Thomas out due to another left hamstring strain, Michael Porter Jr. had 25 points.
But Noah Clowney, who entered the game averaging 17.0 points over his past three games starting at power forward, had just four on 1-of-9 shooting and went 0-for-7 from deep.
The offense was poor, but the defense was even worse, giving up a fast break layup — after a made free throw.
“Those are the situations we want to grow, having attention, a level of attention and communication to all those things. And it’s not happening,” Fernández said. “Obviously I cannot go out there and coach every play and every action.
“I know our guys have the ability to be way better, and we have very high expectations for our guys on how they work and how they compete. And there’s a lot of room to improve. So that’s the exciting part. From now to Game 20 to 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 this.”
The Nets got dominated inside, with Karl-Anthony Towns having 28 points and 12 rebounds.
Jalen Brunson had 19 points and seven assists against a Nets defense in abysmal disarray.
Lottery pick Egor Dëmin had 10 points, four rebounds and three assists, looking more comfortable in the pick-and-roll.
Fellow rookie Drake Powell flashed some unexpected offense with 15 points, going 3-for-3 from deep.
“We shot ourselves in the foot, just, the way we started,” said Powell, who added Fernández’s postgame message was succinct. “Just to stay together. When adversity hits, you get to see who you really are and what you’re made of.”
Day’Ron Sharpe left Sunday’s game with left hamstring tightness.
The Nets did not offer any timeline or clarity on the severity of the injury.
“No, there’s not been any testing. It’s just tightness. So we’ll do our evaluation and whatever we have 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-plus minutes of the third quarter and didn’t return for the fourth.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
