Nets suffer ‘unacceptable’ embarrassment in complete breakdown against Knicks

The Nets’ loss wasn’t just humiliating. It was historic. 

Brooklyn got thrashed 120-66 by the Knicks in front of a sellout crowd of 19,812 at the Garden that saw a rout for the ages. 

Wednesday night marked the biggest margin of victory in Knicks history. The Nets slogged through the lowest-scoring effort in the entire NBA this season, worse than Indiana’s 121-78 loss to Detroit on Jan. 17. 

It was just a point shy of the worst margin of defeat by any squad in the league this season, and only Brooklyn’s late 5-0 run in the waning seconds of garbage time against the end of the Knicks’ bench spared them the blushes of the worst rout in franchise history — their 59-point caning at the Clippers last season. 

It was, in short, embarrassing. 

“It’s just unacceptable,” admitted Noah Clowney. “It can’t happen that way again. At all.” 

Coach Jordi Fernández fell on the proverbial sword afterward, taking the blame. But both the coaches and the veterans — Nic Claxton, Michael Porter Jr. and Ziaire Williams — addressed the team in the locker room about the non-effort. 

“The first thing was fight,” Drake Powell said. 

“Everybody’s on the same page that we shouldn’t be losing by 60,” said Clowney, adding, “Defensively we were disastrous. We didn’t get back for the first part, they lit our ass up for 3, and had everything they wanted.” 

It was a complete breakdown on both ends. 

The Nets shot just 29 percent, and 11-for-40 from deep. Even Porter was held to just 12 points, and he was Brooklyn’s leading scorer. 

On the other end, it was just as bad. Brooklyn allowed 57 percent shooting, and 16-for-32 from behind the arc. They got battered 56-27 on the glass. 

And in the end it was a 13th straight loss to the Knicks, the longest skid in the history of this rivalry that is almost as one-sided as the Globetrotters and the Generals. 

After losing by 36 to the Knicks on Nov. 9, Brooklyn topped that. 

“Tonight was even worse, and I’m the one responsible for it,” Fernández said. “I have to help them better. In the last 12 games, we’ve been poor defensively, poor offensively. And that falls on me. Players are not responsible for it. I’ve gotta make sure that they understand the values that we have and how we want to play.” 

It wasn’t like that. 

Yes, they kept pace a game behind Sacramento for fourth in the lottery race. But that’s no excuse for a non-competitive night like this. 

Up 6-4, they gave up 14 unanswered. 

Trailing just 30-20, the Nets allowed an 8-0 run. 

Rather than rally, Brooklyn folded. 

They conceded a 16-0 run at the start of the fourth quarter, and trailed by 59. And this against a struggling Knicks team that had lost nine of 11. 

“They haven’t been playing well, and they were like, ‘Well, we’re fittin’ to get us one.’ We came out thinking that we were going to get us one, and they played like they wanted it,” Noah Clowney said. “Even at halftime we felt like if we would’ve hit back, we had an opportunity. But we didn’t. We went out there and they hit us again.”