The shorthanded Nets, playing without Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Joe Harris, and Ben Simmons, were down 19 to the Knicks at the half on Wednesday night.
The Knicks had just shot 57 percent from downtown on 23 attempts, and were looking to run their rivals right out of Madison Square Garden and turn their season around. But Brooklyn head coach Steve Nash challenged his players to turn the game around.
“Steve was just saying if we come out and play the right way, we’d have a chance,” Seth Curry said. “But more than that, it was just about establishing our style of basketball and who we are as a team. It wasn’t really about winning or losing, it was about our mindset going out there in that second half and how we were going to play.
“Everybody listened, took the message in, and went out and played together.”
Nash wasn’t necessarily rallying his group to prepare for a win in a game where they trailed by as many as 28. He just wanted to see signs of life, and he got that in the third quarter, where the Nets outscored the Knicks 29-22, but still trailed by as many as 18 in the fourth quarter.
That deficit quickly evaporated as Cam Thomas and company came to life shocking the Knicks with a 111-106 win to match the franchise’s biggest comeback ever.
“I challenged them. It was tough at the half, because I thought largely, they played the right way,” Nash said. “The Knicks made everything for long stretches, and we just couldn’t get their hands off us. They were playing super physical, and as it happens, sometimes they get away with a little more than you’d like, but that’s the nature of the game. The aggressor gets rewarded a lot of the time.”
Brooklyn was the aggressor in the second half, as the team heeded its coach’s halftime message, while on the other side, Tom Thibodeau’s seat may have warmed up even more after a monumental collapse.
“This is a playoff-type physicality, and we have to be more physical offensively and defensively, and it’s a test of our character,” Nash said. “Are we willing to stay in the game when we’re down big and try to get something out of it? Obviously they got a lot more…but it’s down to the players, their character.”
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