Knicks take out their frustrations on Nets, show fight in 54-point rout
Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns dunks against the Nets in the second half of an NBA basketball game at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Did the Knicks care?
Did they care that their season is on the verge of running off the rails as they head into Wednesday night’s game at Madison Square Garden against the Nets? Did they care that they have lost nine of their last 11? Did they care that they were not only losing, but losing big and ugly to teams they ought to blow out?
A day after Jalen Brunson told reporters that the Knicks had to “care a little more about what they are doing,” the team responded with a historic and much needed win, beating a lottery-bound Nets team, 120-66.
The 54-point win was the largest margin of victory in team history, easily eclipsing the previous high of 48 set three times in 1993-94, 1972-73 and 1968-69. The 66 points the Nets scored is the lowest any team has scored in the NBA this season.
It marked the 13th straight time the Knicks have beaten their cross-the-river rivals. The Nets’ last win came on Jan. 28, 2023 when Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant were still on the roster.
The win couldn’t come at a better time, but the question remains whether it is enough to reset their season. Projected by any to be the top team in the East this season, the Knicks have struggled during the month of January with this being just their third win.
“We know it’s not an aberration,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said after the win that raised the team’s record to 26-18. “We are sitting in either third or fourth place. We haven’t played well. We are still in a pretty good position to win a lot of games now. Obviously, we’ve had some struggles and it may not be the last time. But what it does continue to show is if we play the right way, it doesn’t matter who is in front of us. We will find ways to get a win.
The Knicks were coming off a loss to Dallas on Monday where they trailed by 30 points at the half. This time, they decided to set the tone early, jumping out to an 18-point lead at the end of the first quarter.
With a 32-point lead after three, the Knicks did not play any of their starters in the final quarter. Brunson led all scorers with 20 points. Landry Shamet scored 18, while Karl-Anthony Towns and Miles McBride each added 14.
The Knicks’ season hit an almost unimaginable low Monday when they were blown out by an injury-riddled Mavericks team, 114-97, on Martin Luther King Day at Madison Square Garden. Afterward, as they often do, the players met among themselves and, judging from postgame comments, a lack of effort was the primary subject.
“First you have to address it and then go out there and do it,” Brunson said of the team’s effort level. “Either you want to do it or you don’t.”
After the win over the Nets, Brunson said it was good to see the team play like he knows they can after the last couple days of soul searching.
“We just had to be focused and get back to who we are,” Brunson said Wednesday. “This is a good step for us but we have to continue to press the issue of getting better every single day. It was just sticking together and talking it through and having each other’s backs.”
Having watched the level of play this team was capable of in December when they went 11-4 and won the NBA Cup, we know that this is a team that can’t play with effort. Since winning the cup, the Knicks have fallen from 2 1/2 games behind first-place Detroit to a full 7 behind as of Tuesday.
During that stretch, Josh Hart missed nine games with ankle issues and the Knicks went 3-6. Brunson missed three games with ankle issues with the Knicks going 0-3. The two players are the backbone. They are the only starters who have been with the team since the start of the 2022-23 season. So they have somewhat of a panoramic view of how the team has changed as the franchise has built a team with the stated goal of making it to the NBA Finals this season.
In Brunson and Hart’s first three years with the Knicks under coach Tom Thibodeau, there were major player additions — OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns leading the list — but the team basically maintained the same identity.
Adopting the persona of their grind-it-out coach, the Knicks played like they cared deeply about winning whatever game was in front of them. It didn’t matter if it was a mid-January game against the Nets or a second-round playoff game against the Celtics. You rarely got the feeling that the Knicks had taken a night off, that they hadn’t left everything they had on the court.
The Knicks teams under Thibodeau definitely had flaws, but they also had an identity — one built on grit and relentless effort. No matter what happened, the team could fall back on that identity, which is something that can give a team cohesiveness and take them through tough times.
The Knicks are now working on a new identity and showed some much needed resilience Wednesday night. It’s halfway through the season, and the Knicks, in theory, still have some time. But the clock is ticking.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
