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 wasn’t so much challenged 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 big star in the rematch. And – playing without centers Nic Claxton and Day’Ron Sharpe – it got as ugly in the paint as expected.

“Yeah, obviously that was part of it. Definitely an issue. But I just don’t think we brought the energy,” admitted Ben Simmons. “Yeah, we didn’t play the way we should have played.”

It was Simmons who was tasked with starting at center again with Claxton out, and he finished scoreless after 22 minutes of action.

Neither he nor Dorian Finney-Smith could stop 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 as the Nets watched it get blown open.

“I think the big moment in the game was when Karl started scoring in the third quarter and demanded 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 went 4-for-7 from deep.

“On our side, we’re not worried about (the cities),” coach Jordi Fernandez said. “We will play and fight against whoever is in front of us, and whether we have more centers or less centers, we will find a way to respond.”

The only thing Simmons has struggled to do more than defend the post has been scoring at the rim. But the rest of his teammates shared his troubles on 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.

“After finishing at the rim, we should have been better,” Fernandez said.

“It has been a bit of a problem. It’s also up to us to just attack the paint and find shooters,” Johnson said. “Obviously, we’re short-handed with bigs, and that certainly plays a role. … (But) we keep attacking and trying to score in the paint and the results will be the results. But we keep doing it.”

Ziaire Williams’ free throw had given Brooklyn a 29-23 lead with 1:44 left in the first. But an 18-2 blitz over the next four minutes that stretched into the second put the Nets behind for good.

Ex-Net Mikal Bridges (21 points, six boards) drilled a 3-pointer to leave his old team down 41-31 with 9:28 left in the half.

Towns pushed the deficit to 14 with 17 seconds left in the third, and a Bridges turnaround made it 113-98 with 2:48 left.

The Nets saw the ball blitzed out of the hands of Cam Thomas (16 points on 4-for-11 shooting), and got hammered 47-35 on the glass.

“You have to box out,” Simmons said. “If you don’t hit somebody or you don’t know where your man is, you’re not going to rebound.”