Kyrie dropped 24 and had eight rebounds and seven assists for the Nets who swept the four-game season series and beat the Knicks for the seventh straight time
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The Brooklyn Nets beat the New York Knicks 110-98 and took the bragging rights after a back and forth match. Kevin Durant scored 32 points and had 11 assists and 10 rebounds, leading the Nets back from 21 points down to a 110-98 victory on Wednesday night that strengthened their chances of the best spot possible next week in the Eastern Conference play-in tournament.
Durant hasn’t lost a game against the Knicks in nine years and the stakes are even bigger now since he and Kyrie Irving showed up in Brooklyn two years ago.
“We know how much Knicks fans don’t like us, especially now this era of the Nets, with us not choosing the Knicks, me and Kyrie. So it definitely adds something to the rivalry,” Durant said.
After watching the Nets come back from 28 down when he was hurt in their last trip to Madison Square Garden, Durant scored 23 points in the second half to fuel this comeback that pulled Brooklyn within a game of the Cavs for seventh place in the Eastern Conference.
Kyrie Irving dropped 24 and had eight rebounds and seven assists for the Nets who swept the four-game season series and beat the Knicks for the seventh straight time, their longest winning streak in their rivalry since taking a franchise-record 11 in a row from 1984-86.
The team from Brooklyn will host the Cavs on Friday night and if they win that and beat Indiana on Sunday, then they will finish seventh and will qualify for the postseason easily.
It looked like the Knicks would take this match when they were ahead by 18 points in the third quarter but the Nets cut that lead to 10 by the end of the period and then opened the fourth with a 15-2 run to storm into the lead.
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The Net outscored the Knicks 60-31 after halftime and Kyrie had this to say. “I just kept telling our guys that this is our game,” Irving said.
The Knicks recovered to go back ahead by three, but Durant scored eight straight points for the Nets, including the tiebreaking jumper that made it 98-96 with 4:15 to play. The Nets followed with 3-pointers by Irving, Seth Curry and Patty Mills to break it open.
Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said after the game, “We’ve got to understand the intensity at that point of the game is different.”
After dominating the game, Durant revealed that he still gets asked by Knicks fans why he rejected them to join Golden State. “It’s all fun at the end of the day, it’s all funny, but people respect my decision.,” Durant said. “They respect my game, but I understand how big Knicks-Nets is in the city so I’m just trying to embrace it.”
Seth Curry and Mills scored 15 points for the Nets whereas Alec Burks scored 24 points, and RJ Barrett had 23 for the Knicks.
