Knicks/Nets isn’t a rivalry. It’s something better.

The New York Knicks played the Brooklyn Nets last night. The Knicks lost. That’s been the deal since Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Julius Randle and Tom Thibodeau became Brooklyn and Broadway’s chief influencers. It will probably continue until either KD leaves or Messiah X arrives at MSG. Even with Durant and Ben Simmons out injured, the Nets boasted the best player on the floor. Kyrie was the difference.

To be more robustly honest, Kyrie plus the Nets’ obscene advantage from long range were the difference. It was honestly – I don’t think “funny” is the word, exactly. But it was honestly something seeing the Knicks continue to take two after two after two, into literally the final moments of the final minute, against a team that took and made a dozen more threes than they did. The Nets were playing chess, busting out the Scandanavian Defense and the King’s Gambit while the Knicks stuck to checkers. The visitors outscored the homebodys by 22 on twos and by seven on free throws. The math tells you the story.    

This game took a long time to boil and only bubbled for a bit, late in the fourth, when New York was cutting Brooklyn’s lead down to three. There was a sound – you could hear it even through the television; it was different. I can only give you samples, small slivers of it. Listen to the crowd noise in the build-up and splashdown of a late Kyrie three.

There’s a burbling rise after Kyrie crosses over Quentin Grimes, a swell when Irving pulls up from deep and a chorus when the shot falls. But it’s the notes you don’t hear that make a Knicks/Nets crowd an instrument unlike any other in the NBA. The vast majority of NBA games are attended by intensely partisan crowds – when Detroit travels to Utah, the butts in the seats aren’t there for the Pistons. Most NBA crowds are monophonic, one voice oohing and ahhing the same moments, cheering and booing in unison. And let it be said: monophony has its moments.

But put the Knicks and Nets together and now you’re working off an entirely different scale. The crowd’s response to the crossover is a softer, pianissimo sound than an undivided Nets crowd would make; cloudier, but richer, an oboe in an opium dream. The swell is where the polyphony kicks in, the crowd responding to Kyrie seizing the moment, the bright, rising roar of the home fans harmonized by a sound you’re used to hearing unaccompanied at 33rd and 8th – the disgruntled anxiety of a Garden crowd when the other team’s star lines the game up in his sights. When the ball drops through the net, it’s like a four-part chorus exploding: Nets fans who root for the current team, people with free tickets who remember that guy who married Kim Kardashian was a Net, scenesters in search of somewhere new to be seen not being seen and Knicks fans. Knicks-Nets choruses are a richer, more encompassing instrument than most.              

Something unique has taken root where rivalry had been expected to grow. Turns out the NBA, looking to emulate soccer’s success with mid-season tournaments, has stumbled upon its first soccer-style polyphonic crowd. It adds a wonderful flavor to the game experience, the split crowd. Honestly, if the league adds a mid-season tournament that features crowds like we heard last night, and that replaces some of those DET/UTA nights, that’d pro’ly be better for everyone.

The shifting emotions of the crowd – when the game was close; there were long stretches when Brooklyn led by a few possessions and it sounded like any other arena – added to the drama, cooked it in some of its own juices. Someday the Knicks will beat the Nets, but not this day. Someday Knicks-Nets will be a rivalry, but not this day. Someday the flavor of a Knick-Net crowd may be as uniquely NYC as a slice or a bagel with a schmear. For now, where there is hope, there is harmony.