The Knicks didn’t just close Monday night strong. They slammed the door.
What had been a tight, tense game at Madison Square Garden flipped hard in the fourth quarter, when New York turned a four-point deficit into a 103-90 win over the Nets and stretched its winning streak in the rivalry to 15 straight games.
Josh Hart was at the center of it all. The sequence that changed everything started with Moritz Wagner missing an open layup that could have helped Brooklyn hold its edge.
Hart grabbed the rebound, pushed the pace and found OG Anunoby for a 3-pointer. From there, the Knicks never looked back.
Hart’s final line only tells part of the story: eight points, seven assists, six rebounds and three steals. His fingerprints were all over the comeback.
New York opened the fourth with Hart knocking down a 3-pointer, then kept piling on. Wagner missed again, Hart raced ahead and fed Anunoby for another triple, and Anunoby hit yet another 3 on the next possession with Hart setting it up again. A four-point Brooklyn lead had quickly become a five-point Knicks advantage.
Hart kept making winning plays. He picked off a Julius Randle pass and scored in transition, then later found Tyler Kolek for an easy layup. Jordan Clarkson added a 3-pointer, and the Knicks pushed the margin into double digits with 7:48 left.
By the end, the fourth quarter belonged entirely to New York. The Knicks outscored Brooklyn 28-11, held the Nets to 3-for-16 shooting and forced seven turnovers.
That finish was a sharp contrast to the third quarter, when Brooklyn looked like the team ready to seize control. The Nets outscored the Knicks 35-24 in that period behind Michael Porter Jr.’s shooting, Mikel Brown Jr.’s rim pressure and Randle’s physical attack.
Porter scored 13 of his 18 points in the third and buried three 3-pointers during the run. That stretch also pushed him to 7,000 career NBA points. Brown Jr. added important offense after Nolan Traoré picked up his fourth foul, beating defenders off the dribble for back-to-back layups that forced a Knicks timeout.
Traoré finished with 17 points and went 5-for-6 from 3-point range. Brown Jr. added 13.
Randle, back in the building where he spent five seasons as a Knicks cornerstone, got a warm reception before the game and responded with a bruising night. He finished with 21 points and a season-high 11 rebounds, including six offensive boards, for his first regular-season double-double in 23 appearances.
But the efficiency never came with it. He shot 5-for-16, missed all four of his 3-point attempts and turned it over four times.
Brooklyn carried a 79-75 lead into the fourth, but its offense vanished when the game tightened. Porter was scoreless in the final period, and Brown Jr. missed all four of his shots.
The Knicks, meanwhile, found answers from all over the floor. Landry Shamet led them with 22 points, Jalen Brunson scored 19 and Anunoby added 18. Shamet was especially steady, shooting 6-for-8, hitting four 3-pointers and making all six of his free throws.
Mike Brown also leaned into a different look as the game wore on. Mikal Bridges struggled again, finishing with six points on 1-for-7 shooting in 16 minutes.
He left with 8:44 left in the third quarter and did not return. Brown instead rode Shamet, Hart, Anunoby and a mix of reserves, including Clarkson, who scored seven points, and Kolek, who added two after sitting out the first three quarters.
Even with Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns providing relatively little scoring in the fourth, the Knicks had enough. Towns finished with 11 points and 16 rebounds after going scoreless in the first half.
New York also finished with 17 3-pointers and a 13-2 edge in fast-break points, a clear sign of how much sharper and more decisive it was once the game turned.
For Brooklyn, the wait goes on. The Nets’ last win over the Knicks came on Jan. 28, 2023, when Kyrie Irving was still in a Brooklyn uniform. Their last victory at Madison Square Garden came even earlier, on April 6, 2022.
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Since arriving with the Nets, Porter has looked more comfortable as a scorer, coming off a career-best 24.2 points last season. The bigger question now is what comes next, because the sides have yet to find common ground on an extension, leaving his long-term future in Brooklyn very much in play as the season unfolds. [Read more 🡒]