Nets flat in their version of must-win game

From Spencer Dinwiddie calling the Nets the city’s best team to D’Angelo Russell saying the Knicks are a team they’re supposed to beat, clearly the Nets came into the Garden thinking Monday was a game they should win.

But it was the Nets that took the beating in this one. Again.

The Nets got thrashed 115-96 by the Knicks in a game that wasn’t even that close.

It was their third game in four days, after crushing losses in New Orleans and to Golden State. Whether those nail-biters took their heart or the fatigue took their legs, either way, being down by 25 took their pride.

“That’s the next step for a young team to be consistent every night, and playing a team like this the way we play the Warriors,” Ed Davis said. “Obviously they’re not one of the top teams in the league but they come out every night and they play hard.

They played hard and they got the win and they beat us every way. We took this one on the chin.”

The Nets have been taking it on the chin from the Knicks for a while now. It marked the fifth loss to the Knicks in the last six meetings, all of them from being physically overwhelmed. They got hammered 53-32 on the boards and saw Enes Kanter have 15 points and 15 rebounds

— off the bench no less.

“Sure. I’ve talked about it before. It’s something we’ve got to remedy,” Nets coach Kenny Atkinson said. “I thought we did it in the first game we played them at home but now on the road it’s a little bit different. You’ve got to bring a different level of physicality to answer their aggressiveness.

“For some reason we were not ready to play, and we can look for excuses and tough games and all that, but this is game [seven], this isn’t game 74.

We should’ve been more ready.”

After Jared Dudley went scoreless again at power forward, and the Nets got blasted on the boards, Atkinson admitted he might consider using Ed Davis in the starting lineup Wednesday versus Detroit’s Andre Drummond and Blake Griffin.

“It could be something we look at,” Atkinson said. “I don’t know how many rebounds

Jarrett [ Allen] had but he’s going to have to rebound.”