Brooklyn Nets: 5 takeaways from a goring at the Garden

5.  Didn’t Momma always say there’d be days like this?

An NBA season is not so much a metronome of predictability as it is a minefield full of ups and downs and unexpected — sometimes even unseen — hazards.

Over the course of 82 games, there are going to be three or four of those games where nothing you try is going to work out the way it’s supposed to.

Cutters will zig instead of zag. Balls will bounce off the heel of your hand instead of settling into the palm and fingers. Shots will roll around and out, go halfway down and pop back.

And, yes, sometimes you’re just not going to be able to win one for the Gipper, no matter how hard you try.

The New York Knicks were the proverbial predator in the grass, having spent two days of rest finding the perfect place from which to strike its prey — a quarry that it knew would be coming in at less than 100 percent after having wrestled another jungle creature just the day before.

In the role of the hunted, the Nets fought valiantly for as long as they could, which after an emotional loss and a dogged comeback 24 hours or so earlier turned out to be about, oh, five minutes, maybe six.

At that point, they had thrown all of their big punches and were spent. At that point, the Knicks could just pick their spots and finish the thing.

Throw in that New York was desperate for something positive to happen after losing five straight games and you had a perfect storm working against the Nets.

Which one of these scenarios you subscribe to will ultimately say more about you than about the team itself, because the truth — as is almost always the case in these instances — is somewhere in between the two extremes.