Kristian Winfield: Knicks defeat Nets for 14th time in a row -- but this time was too close for comfort

Kristian Winfield, New York Daily News on Mar 20, 2026

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NEW YORK — Better late than never. The orange and blue streak lives on in New York City.

It was only a matter of time before reality set in at Barclays Center, where a Nets team with zero incentive to win — save for putting up some semblance of a fight against the Knicks — exposed what’s become a fatal flaw: slow starts that have undermined all the successes New York has enjoyed in the first season under coach Mike Brown.

The Nets entered Friday’s cross-bridge rivalry game against the Knicks with 17 wins and 52 losses. They played the first half against their in-city counterparts as if it were the last game of their season, as if their entire offseason hinged on securing win No. 18 on this very night.

And maybe it did. Maybe a shot at halting the Knicks’ 13-game winning streak was the last thing the Nets had to fight for in another lost season, a year destined to end competing for NBA draft lottery ping-pong balls before training camp ever begun in late September.

Consider Brooklyn’s season over. And while the Knicks continue to prove they can dig themselves out of holes they create for themselves early into games, their troubling trend — beginning games in the second quarter, not the first — continues to be a storyline as they enter the final 10 games of a regular season they hope can pave the way for the franchise’s first NBA Finals appearance since 1999.

That was the kind of performance the Knicks put on display on Friday, a 93-92 victory — their 14th in a row against the Nets — encapsulating the ebbs and flows that have equal parts plagued and propelled this team this season.

Against a Nets team that sat Michael Porter Jr. and waived Cam Thomas at the Feb. 5 NBA trade deadline, against a Nets team whose best player on the night was a post-deadline salary dump from the Boston Celtics, the Knicks scored just 14 first-quarter points and trailed by as many as 13 before breaking the game wide open — or so they thought — with a dominant third quarter in which they outscored Brooklyn, 31-15.

And when the Knicks built a 14-point lead of their own early into the fourth quarter, they almost immediately let go of the gas and let the Nets scrap their way back into a two-possession game. That two-possession game became one in crunch time, where the Knicks haven’t been as good this year as they were last season, and New York narrowly escaped.

Karl-Anthony Towns, who played a brilliant game, missed a pair of free throws with the Knicks up one, and the Nets failed to execute, settling for a half-court heave as time expired.

It was the opposite of an inspiring performance from a Knicks team expected to compete for a shot at winning the Eastern Conference this season. The Knicks let the Nets shoot 14 of 38 from downtown while converting eight of their own 29 attempts from behind the arc. And they lost track of Josh Minott, a fourth-year veteran on a tanking Nets team, who hit six 3s for 22 points in 26 minutes off the bench.

Meanwhile, Friday marked yet another chapter in the book of Mikal Bridges’ Year 2 Knicks struggles.

Bridges played against the Nets for the eighth time since the Knicks sent five first-round picks to Brooklyn in the blockbuster deal of the summer of 2024. Yet in what looked to be a perfect spot for him to find his scoring rhythm — he scored 11 or fewer points eight of the nine games leading into Friday’s matchup — Bridges scored seven points on 2-of-4 shooting from the field in the first quarter, then scored just one more time for nine points on three-of-seven shooting from the field in 36 minutes of action (though he did add eight rebounds and two assists on the night).

The Knicks took advantage of their biggest mismatch: the center spot. Towns finished with 26 points and 15 rebounds and made 11 straight free throws before bricking two in a row with the win hanging in the balance. Mitchell Robinson added three points and 10 rebounds off the bench, plus much-needed spine, nearly manhandling the entire, youthful Nets roster in an altercation following an alley-oop attempt in the second quarter.

Jalen Brunson finished with 17 points on 7-of-19 shooting from the field and 1-of-6shooting from 3-point range, to go along with eight assists. OG Anunoby added 16 points on 7-of-13 shooting from the field, and the Knicks got 22 points from their bench, including nine from Jordan Clarkson and eight from rookie Mohamed Diawara, who was part of Brown’s closing lineup on Friday.

Landry Shamet left the game with a right knee injury in the third quarter and did not return.

Next up, the Knicks face the Washington Wizards, another lowly Eastern Conference opponent New York will need to find it within itself to get up for before they allow a winnable game to slip through their fingertips.

They almost did on Friday.