Can the Knicks play the Nets every night? 

For one night at least, they found the perfect medicine. With their season beginning to go off the rails, a matchup against their personal punching bag came at the perfect time. 

They blew out the Nets 120-66 Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden, putting an end to their four-game skid. The 54-point margin of victory is their largest ever, by a lot — their previous high was 48 points, which they accomplished three times, in 1993-94, 1972-73 and 1968-69. The Nets’ 66 points were the lowest anyone has scored in the NBA this year. 

Perhaps a historic rout can be what is needed to reset their season. 

“It’s fun, because obviously everyone gets involved, everyone obviously scores but defensively everyone brings it,” Josh Hart said. “We have a game like this, it’s always good. Hopefully it’s a get-right game for us. We just have to continue to build off it.”   

It marked the Knicks’ 13th straight win over the Nets, a streak that dates back to the 2022-23 season. 

The Knicks (26-18) spoke at length about a lack of effort after their embarrassing loss to the Mavericks on Monday. Jalen Brunson challenged his teammates to “care” more than they had been showing. Coach Mike Brown demanded his players “do your f–king job.”

They came out like a team that got those messages. 

They picked up ball handlers a bit further up the court. There was more intensity on the defensive end, conceding fewer open 3-pointers. There was more aggression on the offensive end from the non-Brunson stars. There were more “sprays” — drives into the lane leading to kickouts for open 3s, which are foundational to Brown’s system. 

There were actual cheers around MSG, something that had rarely been heard in recent weeks. Finally, the vibes were lifted. 

“Just seeing us play the way we’re capable of playing,” Brown said. “I don’t know what the score will be every night, but the things that we did out on the floor, we talked about, we drilled, we watched film on and our guys are more than capable. So to go see them put it together for 48 minutes was a lot of fun.” 

But this is not exactly a great litmus test — this matchup has been a mismatch for a while now. And the Nets, who now sit 18 games under .500 and whose own owner was more concerned with draft position than wins before the season, likely won’t be too bent out of shape getting bludgeoned by their inner-city rivals again. With four rookies in the Nets’ rotation, they are at the polar opposite end of the contending spectrum. 

The real test of whether the Knicks have turned over a new leaf will come on Saturday, when they travel to Philadelphia to play the 76ers, against whom they are 0-2 against this season. 

“We just had to refocus and get back to who we are,” Brunson said. “This is a good step for us but we gotta continue to press the issue of getting better every single day.” 

It took the Knicks just a few minutes into the second quarter to build a 21-point lead. It never got lower than that the rest of the game. Brown was able to take out his starters for the entire fourth quarter, and then his reserves promptly scored the first 16 points of the period. In fact, it wasn’t until 5:38 left in the game that the Nets scored their first points of the fourth quarter. They were noncompetitive. 

Brunson scored 11 first-quarter points, as the Knicks quickly built their lead, en route to 20. Karl-Anthony Towns, who has heard the loudest boos during this downturn, found higher quality shots than the ones he had been bricking recently and finished with 14 points in 20 minutes. 

The Knicks held a 29-point advantage in bench points — led by Miles McBride’s 14 and Landry Shamet’s (who went 6-for-6 from deep) 18 — and a 24-point advantage in fast break points, two areas where they were destroyed by the Mavericks on Monday. 

Defensively, they held the Nets to woeful 29.1 percent shooting from the field and 27.5 percent from 3-point range, though this isn’t exactly a high-octane Nets offense. The Knicks gave up 75 points in the first half against the Mavericks — nine more than the Nets’ final output on Wednesday. 

“Consistency is what makes champions,” Towns said. “We gotta find that consistency of bringing this kind of intensity, energy and execution every single night.”

The Knicks badly needed a night like this. Time to see if it was an outlier.