I Love New York! Isaiah Hartenstein Downplays Knicks-Nets Rivalry

If Isaiah Hartenstein's comments are any indication, the New York Knicks don't exactly have their dates with the Brooklyn Nets circled.

Though the New York Knicks will officially play 42 road games this season thanks to the immediate aftermath of the NBA In-Season Tournament, Isaiah Hartenstein believes that things will start to even out come Wednesday night.

The Knicks' backup center offered a scathing critique of the team's supposed rivalry with the Brooklyn Nets, a saga whose latest chapter will be written at Barclays Center (7:30 p.m. ET, MSG). Hartenstein is relatively new to the matchup as a second-year Knick but that didn't stop him from a scalding analysis.

“Is there a rivalry? I mean, I don’t feel it,” Hartenstein said in a report from Stefan Bondy of the New York Post. “I mean, most of the time we go to Barclays it’s mostly Knicks fans, so I don’t know if it’s really a rivalry at this point.” 

Hartenstein is far from the New Yorker to speak of invasions from Manhattan: then-rookie Kristaps Porzingis noted that he'd "sometimes" see Nets fans in New York during his 2015 debut while James Harden recalled "hear(ing) a lot of Knicks fans)" during his brief entry into the rivalry in 2021.

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The Knicks have nagged the Nets ever since the latter made the leap from the ABA in 1976. Said to be invading the Knicks' territory, the Nets were charged a fee that forced them to deal away franchise face Julius Erving. The rivalry then became a stateline struggle upon the Nets' move back to New Jersey before evolving into a battle of boroughs upon their transfer to Brooklyn.

Since then, the Knicks and Nets have had trouble correlating their respective heydays, diluting any semblance of lasting animosity. Unlike the patient approach of the modern Knicks, the Nets have tried to stage coups of the New York basketball mind with flashy high-profile acquisitions such as Harden, Dwight Howard, Joe Johnson, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Kevin Durant, and Kyrie Irving. All that firepower and more, however, has netted (pun intended) only two playoff series victories in 11 years of Brooklyn basketball.  

Of course, the Knicks (15-11) have hardly done better in that span (last year's first-round win over Cleveland being their first since 2013), which further dries up any semblance of national attention beyond New York. To the Knicks' credit, the team at least appears to have a solid foundation headlined by Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle.

A Villanova civil war could be the key to reigniting the rivalry: Brooklyn's future is set to be led by Brunson's fellow former Wildcat and two-time national champion Mikal Bridges, who has endeared himself to Nets fans since coming over as the primary yield of the Durant trade with Phoenix. 

Beyond the backcourt, Hartenstein will have an important role to play in the interior as the Knicks' primary paint man with Mitchell Robinson out. Brooklyn's Nic Claxton is averaging 10.6 points and 9.6 rebounds over eight December games and will be relied upon to get the Nets (13-13) back in the comfortable portions of the Eastern Conference playoff picture. Losses in four of their past five have pushed the Nets to ninth place and a game and a half behind Cleveland for the sixth and final postseason spot. 

Hartenstein, however, is willing to stage the battle on the court rather than the verbal stratosphere. 

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“I’m going to let you all talk about that,” Hartenstein, fresh off a career-best 17-rebound performance against the Los Angeles Lakers on Monday, said of the three-way battle between himself, Claxton, and Robinson for the battle of the city's finest skyscraper. “I’m not going to get into that.”