Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and the Brooklyn Nets could use the time off. Tonight, they played their third game in four days, three cities, and two countries. That didn’t help them when they faced the New York Knicks, who’ve played just two in their last five days.
Jordi Fernández would be the last one to excuse a weak effort from his team on the account of burnout or fatigue. The day he does that is the Nets Twitter collectively agrees on Cam Thomas’ value.
But Fernández didn’t get that from his guys tonight. They didn’t lack drive or focus, just the talent to hang with their crosstown rival, and we’re all okay with that … at least until the NBA Draft Lottery six months from now.
Be that as it may, it was Brooklyn who led early in this second battle of the boroughs. The Knicks, supposedly now known for their offense, started the game just 3-of-11 from the field. The Nets came out switching, and all defenders were ready for every Jalen Brunson jab step and head fake in the opening minutes.
Brooklyn’s offense was no model of efficiency either, but it was one of resiliency, and good enough to have them up two after the end of the first. The Nets tallied seven second chance points in the quarter, surely benefitting from Mitchell Robinson’s absence. Fresh off his big game, Tyrese Martin was a big part of that, notching two first-quarter offensive boards to lead the team. Clowney led in the scoring department with eight, catching and stepping into a three right over Jordan Clarkson a few seconds before the horn. That wasn’t he last one he made either…
Jalen Wilson and Drake Powell joined Martin as the sixth, seventh, and eighth men tonight. They stayed on the floor to begin the second as well, but even with those young lambs running around the perimeter, it was the bigs that New York targeted in the second.
Clowney’s already made notable strides this season by leveraging his size like a true big would, but defending larger centers backing him down against the basket might never be his forte. The Knicks sure thought that too, isolating Karl Anthony Towns on him a handful of times in the first half, even their first two possessions of the game. In fairness, KAT also took Day’Ron Sharpe and Nic Claxton the rack once or twice, but it all added up to 28 first half point in the paint for New York and a 51-48 halftime lead.
The Knicks led by as many as a dozen in the second period but struggled everywhere else outside of the paint, hitting just three mid-range shots and going 3-of-14 from deep in the first half. That was enough to mask Michael Porter Jr.’s rocky start to the game. While MPJ has a God-given talent for hitting jumpers nobody else can (or should) get off, in the first half, he just looked like a regular guy taking bad shots, shooting just 4-of-12 from the field. Regardless, his backup on the depth chart, Ziaire Williams, logged a DNP.
Fernández said that Williams had no injury concerns and that it was his decision to keep him vaulted.
“I wanted to challenge him with his defense,” he said. “Last year, he was elite at a lot of the things that we care about defensively, from ball pressure, to deflections, to being bigger on defense, to defending isolations, and he was huge. I haven’t felt that energy, and then I can go through the numbers, and they were not there. So, I challenged him to do it.
“I wasn’t all the way happy with the last two games, and I just gave the chance to JWil, who has always been ready. Whether I play him more or less, he’s always there for his teammates. It is not about me being right or wrong. It’s just about giving an opportunity to somebody else to refocus, to be ready for the next opportunity, and when it comes, take it, sustain it and be the best defensive player on the team.”
While not to the level of Ziaire’s, Dëmin also had a quiet first half. He put in just five points, but did get two off a steal from Mikal Bridges. For any Brooklyn fans still sour over his exit, please watch and enjoy…
New York got it back up to double digits roughly halfway through the third. Brunson and Towns operated individually for much of the first half, but brought in a few points together via their two-man game there. The Knicks also matched their 3-point output for the entire first half less than eight minutes into the third. You knew they would eventually start making them, and that’s exactly what happened, going 6-of-10 from deep in the frame. Powell may have gotten the last one, stepping back on Tyler Kolek to nail his second triple of the quarter at the buzzer, but the Nets still went into the fourth behind by an 89-75 score.
Clowney, however, blamed the swing on the slow pace they moved at when they came back out of the tunnel.
“I think immediately, when we came out, instead of trying to get the quick hits in transition and playing in the flow of the game, we immediately slowed down and went into half court sets instead of what we were doing to keep us in the game in the first place,” he said. “I think that’s been a common trend in a lot of games. You don’t really want to slow down with a team like that.”
Fernández went with Martin, Wilson, Clowney, Sharpe, and Powell to open the fourth, who got it back to a 10-point game with 10:24 to go. Powell continued to target Kolek and get good results in the process. He finished with 15 points and four assists, shooting 5-10 from the field and 2-6 from deep. Both the assists and points were career-high that he’ll surely surpass.
“I consider him a very, very good defender with a really high ceiling defensively, and I’m going to keep challenging to be better,” Fernández said of the UNC product. “Then, offensively, he saw the ball go in tonight. He’s got to keep trusting the shot…He’s got to be comfortable shooting it a little faster. This is just going to come to time and work, which I think will be okay, but I’m happy with how he looked out there. Ended up shooting six threes. Could have shot a few more, but I like the way he played. He looked free out there.”
Not long after, KAT finished and-one. He took a tough fall in the process though, and after hitting the free throw, Ariel Hukporti got up off the bench, assumedly ready to come in for New York’s best player all night.
But what seemed like a faint opportunity for the Nets to come back quickly revealed itself to be anything but. Without a dead ball to bring him out, Towns stayed in and hit a deep three a few plays later. That propelled New York on a 7-2 jolt that put the Nets behind 19 with 6:37 to play.
That essentially pushed the game beyond Brooklyn’s reach, but they still poked and clawed at it, and got Clowney a career-night in the process. After knocking in three more triples in the fourth, he reached career-bests in scoring (31 PTS) and threes made (7) for a game.
Towns was the only one to score more than him tonight, reaching 37 points by the end of the evening. Still, Clowney had dueled a guy known by many as the best shooting center of all-time, using his favorite weapon against him in the process. That’s a win for him, even if he didn’t recognize it.
“I didn’t look at it that way,” Clowney said of going toe-to-toe with KAT. “I looked at it as a team game and their team beat our team, to be honest.”
For these Nets, that’s also a win, even if he and the standings don’t recognize that either.
Final: New York Knicks 113, Brooklyn Nets 100
The Barclays Center held a moment of silence for New Jersey Net and Wake Forest legend Rodney Rogers before tonight’s game. He passed away last week at age 54. Rogers was a major part of New Jersey’s deep postseason runs in 2003 and 2004.
- In his career-high scoring night, Noah Clowney also joined Michael Porter Jr. (five times) and Cam Thomas (twice) as the only Nets with 30+ points in a game this season.
- Drake Powell reached 15 points, tying his career high that he set on November 9 at MSG, also against the Knicks. They are the first two games of his career with 10+ points. He also has a career-best four assists tonight.
- Prior to the game, Jordi Fernandez also had positive things to say about 19th pick Nolan Traore’s 28-point G League outburst this weekend: “Very good performance. [I’m] very happy. I texted [Nolan]. I watched the game,” Fernandez said on Monday. “We want to play a competitive and winning game of basketball. It starts with the habits. I know he saw the ball go in, which are things you can’t always control. But you can control taking the right shots, make the right play. I think he had a 9-3 assist-to-turnover ratio, which is very good, so all those things are positive. Same with Danny [Wolf]. You know, those consistent steps and we want to see this group competing at a high level, too.”
Getty Images
After a three-day holiday pause, Nets will host the Philadelphia 76ers at home on Black Friday at 7:30 p.m. Philly smoked Brooklyn by 20+ point earlier this month. They’ve since cooled off, sitting at 9-7 in slotted into a Play-In position at the time of writing. They’ll probably view this contest as a “get right” game — the Nets will do their best to make it anything but.
