The Nets couldn't stop Karl-Anthony Towns. They couldn't finish at the rim. And they couldn't break the slide against the Knicks.
Brooklyn lost more than it lost on Sunday when it lost 114-104 to the Knicks in front of a sellout crowd of 19,812.
Two nights after nearly pulling off an upset against the Towns-less Knicks, they had to face their star big man in a rematch. And playing without centers Nic Claxton and Dayron Sharpe got predictably ugly in the paint.
“Yeah, obviously that was part of it. It's definitely an issue, but I don't think we brought the energy,” Ben Simmons admitted. “Yeah, we didn't make the plays we needed to.”
With Claxton out, Simmons was tasked with starting at center again, but he played 22 minutes without scoring.
Neither he nor Dorian Finney-Smith could get in the way of Towns, who finished with 26 points on 10-of-16 shooting and 15 rebounds. The Knicks star made 14 shots on 5-of-6 shooting in the third when the Nets took shots.
“I think the biggest moment of this game was when Karl started scoring in the third quarter. It got a lot of attention, but now it's stressing us defensively. That's what they presented. It's a matter of doing it,'' said Cam Johnson, who had a team-high 22 points, five boards and five assists, going 4-for-7 from deep.
“For us, we're not concerned about that.” [Towns]'' said coach Jordi Fernandes. “We're going to play and fight, no matter who we're in front of. Whether we have more or fewer centers, we'll find a way to respond.”
The only thing Simmons struggles with more than guarding the post is scoring at the rim. But the rest of his teammates shared his anguish on Sunday.
Brooklyn shot an astonishingly low 12-of-30 in the paint. He made 9 of 20 shots in restricted areas and 3 of 10 shots in the remaining key areas. To give you an idea of how poor this is, the league averages are 65.6 percent and 42.5 percent, respectively.
“When we finished at the rim, we should have been better,” Fernandez said.
“We had a little bit of a problem. It's also our responsibility to attack the paint and find shooters,” Johnson said. “Obviously we're short on big-team talent and that's definitely had an impact… [But] We’re going to continue to attack and try to score in the paint, and results will be results. But we're going to keep doing it. ”
Ziale Williams' free throws gave Brooklyn a 29-23 lead with 1:44 left in the first. However, the Nets were outscored 18-2 in the next four minutes of the second set, putting them at a complete disadvantage.
Former Nets Mikal Bridges (21 points, six boards) made a 3-pointer with 9:28 left in the first half to give his former team a 41-31 lead.
Towns pushed the lead to 14 points with 17 seconds left in the third, and Bridges made it 113-98 with 2:48 left.
The Nets got the ball out of Cam Thomas' hands (16 points on 4-of-11 shooting) and slammed it against the glass, 47-35.
“You have to box out,” Simmons said. “If you don't hit someone or you don't know where they are, you don't get rebounds.”
