Let me paint you a picture of human suffering. The Brooklyn Nets showed up to Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night and left 54 points lighter. One hundred twenty to sixty-six. That is not a basketball score. That is what happens when you accidentally send your JV team to play the varsity squad and the refs refuse to call mercy rule.
The Knicks won by 54 points. FIFTY-FOUR. The largest margin of victory in franchise history. And honestly? The Nets are lucky it was not worse.
Jalen Brunson and the starters were done after three quarters. THREE QUARTERS. They were up 88-56 and Thibs pulled them like he was emptying the bench in a preseason game against a G-League team. The Knicks reserves then went on a 16-0 run to open the fourth quarter because apparently even the scrubs wanted to pile on.
The Nets scored 66 points. That is the lowest game score in the NBA since 2016. There have been 13,120 games played in the last decade and the Nets found a way to produce the single most embarrassing offensive performance of all of them. Congratulations, Brooklyn. You are historically bad.
The Nets have now lost 13 straight games to the Knicks. THIRTEEN. Their last win against New York was in January 2023. If you bet on the Nets against the Knicks at any point in the last three years, I need you to close this browser and call a gambling helpline immediately.
Michael Porter Jr. led the Nets with 12 points. Twelve. The leading scorer had twelve points. Ziaire Williams was the only other Net in double figures with 11 off the bench. This is what organizational failure looks like in real-time.
The Knicks had lost four straight coming into this game. Brunson called a players-only meeting after their loss to Dallas because they needed to "find answers among themselves." The answer they found was apparently "let us destroy Brooklyn so badly that no one remembers we lost to the Mavericks."
Landry Shamet dropped 18 off the bench, going 6-of-6 from three. Karl-Anthony Towns had 14 and 8 without breaking a sweat. This was a destruction so complete that the Knicks probably got more rest than they would have on an off night.
Brooklyn sits at 12-30 on the season with the fifth-best odds at the top pick in the 2026 draft. If there is any silver lining to getting murdered by 54 points in the most famous arena in basketball, it is that losses like this improve your lottery position. The Nets are speedrunning their way to a top-3 pick.
But let us be real: no draft pick is going to fix whatever organizational disease caused a professional basketball team to score 66 points in 48 minutes. That is 1.375 points per minute. That is youth league numbers. That is genuinely embarrassing.
I watched this entire game. I do not know why. Maybe I am a masochist. Maybe I hate myself. Maybe I had Knicks -14.5 and wanted to see how much I won by. The point is, I witnessed a professional sports franchise die on live television, and all I can say is: if you are a Nets fan, I am genuinely sorry.
Actually, no. If you are still a Nets fan after 13 straight losses to the Knicks, you are built different. You are immune to shame. You have ascended beyond the mortal plane of bandwagon fandom. You are either incredibly loyal or clinically insane, and I respect it either way.
120-66. Fifty-four points. Franchise history. Burn it all down.