Nets lack of size exposed by Karl-Anthony Towns return in loss to Knicks

The Nets couldn’t stop Karl-Anthony Towns.They couldn’t finish at the rim.

And they couldn’t break their skid against the Knicks.Brooklyn didn’t so much get outhustled as outmuscled in a 114-104 loss to the Knicks before a sellout crowd of 19,812 at the Garden on Sunday.Two nights after nearly pulling off an upset against the Towns-less Knicks, they had to face the star big man in the rematch.And — playing without centers Nic Claxton and Day’Ron Sharpe — it got as ugly in the paint as expected.“Yeah, obviously it was a part of it.

Definitely a problem.But I just don’t think we brought energy,” admitted Ben Simmons.

“Yeah, we didn’t play how we needed to play.”It was Simmons that was tasked with starting at center again with Claxton out, and he finished scoreless in 22 minutes of action.Neither he nor Dorian Finney-Smith could hinder Towns, who had 26 points and 15 rebounds on 10-for-16 shooting.

The Knicks star had 14 on 5-for-6 shooting in the third when the Nets saw it get blown open.“I think the big moment in the game was when Karl started to score in that third quarter, and demand a lot of attention, and now it’s stressing us out defensively.So that’s the problem they present,” said Cam Johnson, who had a team-high 22 points, five boards, five assists and hit 4-for-7 from deep.“On our end, we’re not concerned with [Towns],” coach Jordi Fernandez said.

“We’ll play and fight against whoever is in front of us, and whether we have more centers or less centers, we’ll find a way to respond.”The only thing Simmons has struggled at more than defending the post has been scoring at the rim.But the rest of his teammates shared his woes Sunday.Brooklyn shot a staggeringly poor 12-for-30 in the paint.

They were 9-for-20 in the restricted area and 3-for-10 in the rest of the key.Just to understand how poor that is, the league averages are 65.6 percent and 42.5 percent, respectively.“Finishing at the rim, we should’ve ...