The Knicks and Suns both play basketball and wear orange. That’s pretty much where the similarities end

This recap was originally going to be a crossword puzzle. I’ve been sick as a dog all week but finally felt some energy Wednesday night, not coincidentally starting sometime around 10 p.m., right as the new New York Knicks cracked open the first of 48 minutes of whoop-ass in a 138-122 drubbing of one of the NBA’s great rackets. By 5 the following morning I had to concede defeat — whatever workable create-your-own free downloadable crossword puzzle generator I’d assumed I’d find didn’t exist. C’est la vie. We live in (and as) a dying monstrosity; it’s only fair our dreams’ reach should exceed their grasp, too. Wednesday’s losers know what I’m talking about.

The Phoenix Suns, the last of the Old World superteams (i.e. in the style of the old collective bargaining agreement), built one of the biggest horse-powered armies the world has ever known right as the automobile came about. Remember the original premise of “superteams”? They weren’t just about championship ceilings, but jacked-up floors. If one star is enough to power a mediocre team to 40 wins, how high must that climb when you add a Kevin Durant? And a Bradley Beal on top of that? Herbert Hoover promised Americans a chicken in every pot; Mat Ishbia’s Suns promised Phoenicians a title window for two, maybe even three years. Nod if a billionaire ever lied to you.

The Suns’ superstar shenanigans reflect the wealth imbalance of our time and our monsters: while each of their Big 3 is making $50 million this season, the rest of the roster earns 65 to 95 percent less. That’s (partly) how a team goes from 8-1 to losers of six of seven, hemorrhaging points as the Knicks shot 60/50/90 much of Wednesday night. The desert triumvirate fell from riches to rags in a single calendar year. Now they’re looking at cap hell and no meaningful draft picks the rest of the decade. Adam Silver would say look on the bright side: at least they’re in no danger of becoming a dynasty, something NBA fans have always hated, right?

On the real bright side, Karl-Anthony Towns has now scored 30 or more six times this year, more than he did all of last year with Minnesota. You may remember Julius Randle got off to a rough start shooting last year after spending the offseason recovering from ankle surgery, failing to reach 30 in a game until December. The distance between one end of the universe and the other is closer than that between Randle’s first 15 games last season and Towns this year. With Nikola Jokić currently out of action, there isn’t a 7-footer walking the earth having more of an impact offensively than KAT.

Then there’s Jalen Brunson, for whom the words “The Footprint Center” hold some magical meaning. How else to explain the carryover from the captain’s masterpiece last season in Phoenix to this year’s sorcery? A year ago Brunson scored 50 in The House That Cotton Fitzsimmons Built, drilling all 12 of his second-half shots, including nine threes; Wednesday he extended that to 14 straight long bombs, maintaining his prodigious pace of production with 25 points by intermission.

Thing is, Brunson wasn’t the one-man dynamo he was while putting up that number a year ago; this time around he was no less omnipotent but far less overt. This wasn’t dropping the hammer so much as slipping in some scalpel, less fucking and more making love. You know the feeling when you’re cutting wrapping paper with scissors and you catch one of those runs where they just glide effortlessly through it, like a hot knife through butter? That was Brunson. At one point going back to last year, Brunson had connected on 22 of 25 attempts in the Suns’ building, the same numbers Phil Simms put up quarterbacking Super Bowl XXI. Other than your O2 level, 88% of anything is almost always pretty good.

Beating the shorthanded Suns, however, is not the stuff dreams are made of. As brilliant as Towns and Brunson are on one side of the ball, “brilliant” is not often the word used regarding their play on the other. I wonder if that concern, like the Suns, is past its time. Towns did the postgame with Mike Breen and Jamal Crawford and sounded sheepish about New York giving up 122 points. And of course that’s what we like to hear, isn’t it? They did it differently in the 1970s than the 1990s, but whenever the Knicks have been really good they’ve been top-shelf defensively. Many point to nights like last night and tsk, tsk how many points they gave up, which feels like making basketball into church and oneself into one of those lamentable lot who whip their backs into bloody ribbons because we’re all dirty rotten sinners, unworthy of anything but suffering.

But behold, bonehead: the Knicks scored 138! They won by 16 and led wire to wire, pretty much by 15-25 throughout. This team brought us all a lot of suffering for a lot of this century. Put down the whip. Those beatitudes we were promised oh so long ago? We’re there.

Last week, Jake Paul somehow suckered his way into $40 million of other people’s money fighting a man closer to his 90s than his prime. If Paul’s ever looking for a real challenge, he may consider the Knicks, who’ve been knocking teams out this year like it’s their job, which it sort of is. Last year, 36% of Knick wins were blowouts, defined (by me) as 16 points or more. So far this year that number’s 56%. Next game is tomorrow in Utah, currently the West’s worst. Danny Ainge runs the Jazz. Danny Boy took more punches in his day than Tyson and Paul combined in their whatever-that-was; he was even once bitten by a Tree. When Ainge coached in Phoenix, one of his own players threw a towel in his face. Could very well end up another blowout. If so, you’re allowed to enjoy it — no matter how many the loser scores.