Kristian Winfield: Knicks defeat Nets for 14th time in a row — but this time was too close for comfort

NEW YORK — Better late than never. The orange and blue streak lives on in New York City. It was only a matter of time before reality set in at Barclays Center, where a Nets team with zero incentive to win — save for putting up some semblance of a fight against the Knicks — exposed what’s become a fatal flaw: slow starts that have undermined all the successes New York has enjoyed in the first season under coach Mike Brown.

The Nets entered Friday’s cross-bridge rivalry game against the Knicks with 17 wins and 52 losses. They played the first half against their in-city counterparts as if it were the last game of their season, as if their entire offseason hinged on securing win No. 18 on this very night.

And maybe it did. Maybe a shot at halting the Knicks’ 13-game winning streak was the last thing the Nets had to fight for in another lost season, a year destined to end competing for NBA draft lottery ping-pong balls before training camp ever begun in late September. Consider Brooklyn’s season over.

And while the Knicks continue to prove they can dig themselves out of holes they create for themselves early into games, their troubling trend — beginning games in the second quarter, not the first — continues to be a storyline as they enter the final 10 games of a regular season they hope can pave the way for the franchise’s first NBA Finals appearance since 1999. That was the kind of performance the Knicks put on display on Friday, a 93-92 victory — their 14th in a row against the Nets — encapsulating the ebbs and flows that have equal parts plagued and propelled this team this season. Against a Nets team that sat Michael Porter Jr.