‘Embarrassed’ Knicks Roll Past the Nets in the Second Half

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The Knicks retreated into the confines of their locker room at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night facing another ignominy. They trailed the Brooklyn Nets by 5 points at halftime and were on their way to a defeat that would only compound their early season tumult. Their defense, newly restructured and with a newly named maestro, remained shaky. Worst of all, they were trailing their crosstown rival — an organization that is using this season to rebuild and is stocked with little-known players.

“We were embarrassed,” Brandon Jennings said.

Jeff Hornacek, the Knicks’ coach, was upset. He used the intermission to release his frustration and to pound his message into the players. “He went off on us,” Courtney Lee said.

It was a pivotal moment for the Knicks. When they took the court again, they popped into form. Newly energized, suddenly suffocating defensively, and with the instant firepower of Carmelo Anthony charging them, the Knicks outscored the Nets by 19 points over the second half for a 110-96 victory.

It was an auspicious ending to what had been a stilted day. The victory was a stabilizer, pulling their record to 3-4 and putting a momentary stop to the turbulence of the past few days.

Anthony scored 22 points, a game high, but his star turn came in the third quarter. He scored 14 consecutive points for the Knicks over a stretch of 3 minutes 46 seconds, turning a 67-58 deficit into a 2-point lead by the time he took a seat on the bench when the quarter was nearly over. It was an eruption that catalyzed the win.

“I don’t think anyone knows that something like that is coming,” Anthony said. “Just a feeling. It kind of was a zone that you go into. I got there coming out of halftime.”

Still, Anthony’s night mirrored the Knicks’ — showing their faults even in victory. The Knicks were down a dozen points in the first quarter and hearing boos from the home crowd by the second. The game had the makings of another difficult loss.

The day before, the Knicks had already faced their first flare-up and executed their first shake-up. Palace intrigue continued to run amok, as it has for a long time, a trend that has continued unabated since Phil Jackson took over as the team’s president. Kurt Rambis, an assistant coach, was appointed the new defensive coordinator, and Hornacek rejiggered his defensive philosophy.

It was a sequence of events that were bad enough to make their 2-4 start feel appreciably worse.

“Well. the way everybody thinks the sky is falling, I guess so,” Hornacek said before the game. “Again, I don’t think any of our guys, any of the coaches, anyone in the organization is panicked about it.”

The Knicks began the game running sets out of the triangle offense in at least their first five possessions — a decision that did not go unnoticed after an ESPN report the previous day said that Jackson was unhappy the Knicks were not running his beloved system despite the team having an offense in the top half of the N.B.A. in efficiency. Hornacek had denied the day before that Jackson had told him anything of that kind, and maintained that he felt the freedom to run the Knicks the way he wanted.

Yet, the defense was under the highest scrutiny. The Knicks had struggled mightily against the pick-and-roll up to this point; they gave up more points per possession initiated by a ball screen than any other in the N.B.A., according to SportVU data, and by a wide margin. They changed their operating scheme to be more conservative, but the Nets piled up 29 points in the first quarter and had a 55-50 lead at halftime.

That all dissipated once Anthony got going. His shooting came as the defense clamped down and held the Nets to 41.3 percent shooting for the game.

The Knicks led by a point at the end of the third quarter and kept the momentum churning for the fourth. After being bitten by a fourth-quarter lineup devoid of starters in the loss to the Jazz on Sunday, Hornacek staggered the minutes of Anthony and Kristaps Porzingis, allowing them to take turns as the hub of the offense.

Porzingis scored 9 points in the fourth as the centerpiece of a lineup otherwise filled by bench players, and he scored 21 in all. Jennings added 11 assists and the Knicks’ lead grew to 20. The substitutes played so well that Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah sat for the entire period.

“Our bench guys were great,” Hornacek said. “They came in and brought the energy. Melo got hot there and got that third quarter rolling. It was a great second half for our guys to see what putting the pressure on defensively can do for your team.”