Knicks easily handle tanking Nets for fourth straight win

As easy as it was supposed to be. 

The Knicks handled their business against the tanking Nets, pummeling their rival behind a balanced attack in a wire-to-wire conquest, 134-98. 

Karl-Anthony Towns led the scoring with 28 points for the Knicks (6-3), who won their fourth consecutive game while improving to 6-0 at home. 

Jalen Brunson of the New York Knicks greets Landry Shamet and Mikal Bridges after scoring during the first half. Jason Szenes / New York Post

Just like last week against the terrible Wizards, Mike Brown’s squad didn’t play down to the competition.

They squashed it. 

The Knicks started with an 8-0 run after tipoff.

They led by 15 at the break and 37 in the third quarter.

A steady beatdown. 

Towns also had 12 rebounds. Jalen Brunson and OG Anunoby each had 19 points in less than 30 minutes apiece.

Mitchell Robinson played just 16 minutes and his impact was noteworthy — the Knicks outscored Brooklyn by 40 points when the center was on the floor. 

Once billed as a rivalry, this intra-borough contest has lost all its luster, the juice of a steamrolled grape.

Long gone are the antagonists Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and Mikhail Prokhorov.

They’ve been replaced in Brooklyn by a young, nondescript squad built to tank by the teflon Sean Marks.

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The Nets (1-9) are gunning for a first overall draft pick and have acted appropriately, handing the keys to defensive-averse players like Michael Porter Jr. and Cam Thomas (who was injured for Sunday’s game). 

The only interesting matchup at MSG involved the head coaches, with Brooklyn’s Jordi Fernandez facing his mentor Mike Brown.

The two were together in Cleveland and Sacramento, with Fernandez serving as the understudy. 

Josh Hart of the New York Knicks goes up for a shot during the first half. Jason Szenes / New York Post

“Great young coach,” Brown said of Fernandez “He’s got a young team obviously so they’ve gotta figure some things out. Any time I get a chance to see him, I always love to see him. But I want to kick his ass.”

Brown followed up with a drubbing.

The Knicks scored 77 points in the first half, with five players in double-digits by the break. 

Brown, who had three days off to prepare for the Nets, desires a fast-paced, high-octane offense — and that developed easily against the Nets. 

“It was great (to have three days off). A lot of teams were playing five games in a short amount of time to start the season,” Brown said. “Any time you can get your guys some rest and work on shoring up some things that you can be better at you try to take advantage of it. So that’s what we did, tried to clean out some of the stuff that we’ve been trying to teach our guys on both sides of the ball. We introduced a couple of new things. And we tried to give our guys some rest, too.”

The Knicks also had extra rest in the fourth quarter, with all the starters pulled before the midway point.

Easy night’s work.