By Brian Mahoney, Associated Press

NEW YORK — Steve Nash provided the beautiful point guard play that once made Mike D’Antoni’s offense hum and now is sorely lacking.

Then, Shannon Brown crushed the Knicks with a 3-pointer that nearly bounced over the basket before bouncing in, a shot as ugly as this game.

“Probably about par for the course,” Phoenix coach Alvin Gentry said.

Nash had 26 points and 11 assists, and the Suns snapped a five-game losing streak with a 91-88 victory over the Knicks on Wednesday night.

Brown and Grant Hill each scored 14 points for the Suns, who bounced back from an embarrassing 118-97 loss to a Chicago team without Derrick Rose a night earlier.

They got help with a lucky bounce on Brown’s 3-pointer from the corner that bounced off the rim, then the top of the center of the basket before falling in to give them a five-point lead with 35 seconds left. Nash made it stand up with six free throws in the last 16 seconds.

Gentry said Nash, who shot 9 of 12, is playing as well as he did in his MVP seasons under D’Antoni. Nash said playing his former coach and teammate Amare Stoudemire, in the city where he lives in the summer, was “a homecoming in some ways” but denied any extra significance in beating them.

“Right now, we could have beat anybody and it’d be sweet,” Nash said. “It’s been a tough year, we’ve had a tough stretch, so for us, any win is a huge relief and hopefully will give us some confidence and maybe get us going a little bit.”

Stoudemire scored 23 points for the Knicks, who have lost four straight and can’t find answers for their offensive struggles.

“I know we’re 6-8, I know we’re in a little bit of a crisis here,” D’Antoni said. “But we’re playing hard, playing good defense. There’s some good things we’re doing. We’ve just got to figure out the one part and that’s the part that should be easiest. It’s become a problem, and if we solve it, we’ll be pretty good. We just have to do it sooner rather than later.”

Iman Shumpert added 20 points and Landry Fields had 17, but Carmelo Anthony, perhaps still bothered by a sore left wrist, shot just 5 of 22 while finishing with 12 points and 11 rebounds.

Anthony did not speak to the media. A Knicks spokesman said he left because of a family issue.

Hill hit jumpers for the Suns’ last three baskets of the third quarter, giving them a 64-61 edge. The Knicks then managed just two field goals in the first six minutes of the fourth, and Phoenix finally got some room when a 10-4 run, ending with consecutive baskets by Brown, made it 78-71.

Shumpert’s 3-pointer cut it to 82-80 before Brown answered with his 3 from the corner that had to be reviewed.

Steve Nash had 26 points and 11 assists, Shannon Brown hit a
crucial 3-pointer that was as ugly as this game, and the Phoenix
Suns snapped a five-game losing streak with a 91-88 victory over
the New York Knicks on Wednesday night.

Brown and Grant Hill each scored 14 points for the Suns, who
bounced back from an embarrassing 118-97 loss to a Chicago team
without Derrick Rose a night earlier.

They got help with a lucky bounce on Brown’s 3-pointer from the
corner that nearly hit the top of the backboard before falling in
that gave them a five-point lead with 35 seconds left, and Nash
closed it out with six free throws in the last 16 seconds.

Former Suns forward Amare Stoudemire scored 23 points for the
Knicks, who have lost four straight.

Iman Shumpert added 20 points and Landry Fields had 17, but
Carmelo Anthony shot just 5 of 22 while finishing with 12 points
and 11 rebounds. Neither team led by more than six in the first
three quarters. Hill hit jumpers for the Suns’ last three baskets
of the third quarter, giving them a 64-61 edge. Anthony was just 2
of 13 through three but New York stayed in it behind Fields, who
played aggressively and scored 10 in the period.

The Knicks then managed just two field goals in the first six
minutes of the fourth, and Phoenix finally got some room when a
10-4 run, ending with consecutive baskets by Brown, made it
78-71.

Shumpert’s 3-pointer cut it to 82-80 before Brown answered with
his 3 from the corner that had to be reviewed. Shumpert made
another 3, but Nash kept hitting from the line, and it ended when
Shumpert’s rushed 3 from near midcourt was nowhere near the
basket.

Tyson Chandler grabbed 17 rebounds for the Knicks on a night
there were plenty of missed shots as both teams showed why they
have been struggling so much early in the season.

The surprising culprits have been the team’s offenses, with both
struggling just to reach 90 points during their skids. That’s
particularly hard to imagine in Phoenix, where the Suns remained
potent long after Mike D’Antoni brought his high-powered system to
New York, and comes just a year after the teams combined for 250
points here in the Suns’ 129-121 victory.

“That’s pretty ironic you know, because obviously most of the
things we do is what Mike did when he was there,” Suns coach Alvin
Gentry said. “There’s a few things that we’ve changed, but it’s
kind of a mystery to me. I can’t put my finger on the fact that
we’re struggling to get to 100 every game. I thought that would be
one of the areas where we’d have the least worries and it’s become
just the opposite.”

Gentry shook up his rotation in an effort to balance things
after noticing the Suns were 27th in the NBA in second-quarter
scoring. Rookie Markieff Morris made his first start at forward and
Ronnie Price got the nod at shooting guard.

Turns out he didn’t the extra scoring, because the Knicks
remained in a seemingly season-long shooting slump.

It was the sixth straight game the Knicks failed to reach 100
points, their second-longest streak under D’Antoni, according to
STATS, LLC. They went seven games in a row early in the 2009-10
season, when they had little talent while clearing cap space for
free agency.

Now they have All-Star talent in Stoudemire and Anthony, but the
offense just isn’t running smoothly without a veteran point guard.
They are hoping that when Baron Davis finally is ready from a
herniated disc in his back sometime around the end of the month
that he can change that.

The Knicks wrap up their string of four homes in six nights with
a back-to-back against Milwaukee and Denver on Friday and
Saturday.

Notes: D’Antoni said C Jerome Jordan and G Jeremy Lin, assigned
Tuesday to Erie of the NBA Development League, would probably
return near the end of the month when Davis is back and the team
will want to play 5-on-5 in practice. … The Knicks played without
reserve guard Bill Walker, who has a sore right knee.

Suns (4-9) at Knicks (6-7)

C: Marcin Gortat … Tyson Chandler
PF: Channing Frye … Amar’e Stoudemire
SF: Grant Hill … Carmelo Anthony
SG: Jared Dudley … Landry Fields
PG: Steve Nash … Iman Shumpert

Key Knicks subs: Toney Douglas, Mike Bibby, Jared Jeffries, Bill Walker, Josh Harrellson.
Key Knicks injury: Baron Davis (herniated disk) is out.

Today’s Orange Slices, a little travel-tardy:

* Somebody is going to get their team right tonight. One team might even rediscover its offense too.

The parting of Mike D’Antoni and Amar’e Stoudemire from Phoenix to New York in recent years has proven good for nobody this season. The Knicks have lost three games in a row. D’Antoni is on the hot seat. Stoudemire is shooting 42 percent and the glory time of it being his team did not even last a season before Carmelo Anthony took over. The Suns are worse off than the Knicks, having lost five in a row and going into year two of having no player to get baskets or free throws when all else fails.

Both teams have lost their offensive swag, experiencing double-digit scoring drop-offs from last season.

“Back to the drawing board,” Suns coach Alvin Gentry said after the Suns’ Tuesday loss at Chicago.

* Steve Nash continually points out the Suns lack of talent as a reminder that we all need to readjust our bar of expectations. The realists knew that a fringe playoff race would be a best-case scenario for this team, one that needed to have everything go right with healthy and performances to even get to that point. Health problems hit them early and several players have not shot well to squelch any early optimism.

The most dangerous problem now is they are reverting to their porous defensive ways. Sometimes, they have just been bit by their own game plan. You want Kyrie Irving to shoot jumpers because he gets to the rim so well. But the Cavaliers’ key second-quarter run in that game was full of Irving jumpers. Deron Williams was a 35 percent shooter who torched Phoenix and then went 3 for 15 the next night. The Suns wanted Carlos Boozer to take outside shots and he got hot.

“You can blame the defense but there were some stretches where everything was going in,” Nash said of the Chicago loss. “That put them in a position to have a lot of confidence to make plays the rest of the game. They made a lot of shots in the first quarter outside 15 feet that were abnormal.”

But at some point, the Suns should want to shed their soft label in those moments. Boozer made 11 shots in the first half Tuesday night. How many would it take before a defender knocked a screener to the ground, put a hand in Boozer’s face, fingers in his eyes, a body to his chest?

“We’ve got to be more physical,” Gentry said. “That’s slipped a bit. Our rotations have slipped. We haven’t done a good job of communicating. We’re dying for practice time and we don’t have any time until we get to Dallas.”

But as Gentry acknowledged, the lack of practice time is every team’s problem is this compressed schedule. Part of the Suns’ defensive problem recently is they adhere to a plan but do not adjusted individually during the game.

“Ultimately, defense is pride,” Grant Hill said. “I’m going to do all I can to prevent my man from scoring. There is a team concept. Elston (Turner) is doing a good job of trying to teach it. You have to take pride in doing the assignment the right way. We’ve shown when we do it, we can be pretty good. When we don’t, we can be pretty bad.”

How about Shannon Brown? He goes from the Lakers to this.

“We’ve got to trust each other out there,” Brown said. “We’ve got to know our defensive assignments and go out there and do it. We’ve got to see each other and be on a string. It has to be a constant rotation of us playing together.

“We’ve got to stick together and have confidence. The only we’re going to come out of this slump is if we stick together rand stay positive with each other.”

* With no top-50 scorers for a second consecutive season, Nash could win the assist title again (he is tied at 10.0 with Rajon Rondo). That has New York salivating at the thought of the city’s offseason resident joining them in free agency next summer. The New York Post headline today read, “Hello Sunshine … Knicks taking close look at Nash.” The New York Times’ headline read, “The Power of a Single Player … Knicks lack point guard to elevate their offense.”

As much as Phoenix is struggling offensively, New York might even be worse off. The Knicks sorely need a playmaking point guard to execute D’Antoni’s offense but instead rank in the NBA’s bottom five for field goal shooting and assists. Stoudemire, who had back issues, is shooting a career-low 42 percent and seeing Tyson Chandler get the pick-and-roll calls and the Olympic finalist nod. Carmelo Anthony is not shooting or feeling much better with a 42.7 percent clip and a sore left wrist and right ankle.

The Knicks are waiting on Baron Davis, 32, to get well from a herniated disk but he is still weeks away from playing.

* Nash lost more ground on the career free throw percentage record he has held a few times before relinquishing it. Nash missed another free throw Wednesday, making it so that he needs a streak of 12 made free throws to retake the league record from Mark Price. Nash is at 90.35 percent and Price’s record is 90.39.

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Photos from the game

PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns have waived backup point guard Zabian Dowdell, signed guard Ronnie Price and added forward Marcus Landry to the roster.

Dowdell gave the Suns quality minutes as Steve Nash’s backup last season, but he has been bothered by a sore right knee in training camp. Phoenix also signed point guard Sebastian Telfair just before the start of camp, helping lead to Dowdell’s release on Tuesday.

Price has averaged 3.6 points over six NBA seasons with Sacramento and Utah.

Landry has spent most of his professional career in the NBADL since leaving Wisconsin in 2009, his lone NBA experience a 17-game stretch with the Knicks in 2009-10 before being traded to Boston.

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