 Rodney Rogers helped hand New York its 11th road loss in 12 games. Barry Gossage/NBAE/Getty Images 56k | 300k |
Stephon Marbury scored 20 points and Shawn Marion added 19 for Phoenix, which has split its last six games.
"I thought right from the jump that Shawn did a great job defensively," Phoenix coach Scott Skiles said. "I hate to single anybody out though. We were just all over the place and very active, even with the zone in the first half."
New York was unable to build on Tuesday's 94-70 win at Golden State and dropped to 1-7 on the road.
Allan Houston scored 20 points for the Knicks, who were 2-of-20 from 3-point range. New York missed its first 13 3-point attempts. The 72 points were one shy of a season low for the Knicks, who suffered a 90-71 home loss to Golden State on November 10.
After seeing his club drop to 5-8, New York coach Jeff Van Gundy was terse in his postgame comments.
"They beat us in every phase. Happy Thanksgiving," he said before walking away.
Van Gundy had nothing to be happy about. The Knicks were never in the game as the Suns opened a 30-17 lead after the first quarter.
"When you win convincingly like we did tonight, it makes it a lot easier the next day to wake up," Marybury said.
New York's Latrell Sprewell scored just five points on 2-of-12 shooting. He had 29 in Tuesday's win over the Warriors.
"We took him out of what he wanted to do," Marion said. "They had a big game last night. There were tired, but at the same time, we couldn't let them get off to a good start tonight. We did that. That's what it boiled down to."
The Knicks shot just 34 percent (27-of-80) from the field and scored fewer than 20 points in all but the third quarter, when they had 28.
"When you have a game like we did last night, you have to build on it. You can't take a step back," Houston said. "We took a step back. You can't do what we did tonight. After what should have been a season-changing game, for us to come out and crawl back into your hole."
Marbury said the Suns took advantage of a team playing on back-to-back nights.
"When you get a team playing back-to-back, you want to push the ball up as much as you can," he explained.
Phoenix shot 52 percent (40-of-78) from the field and outscored the Knicks on the fastbreak, 13-2. The Suns also scored 23 points off 16 New York turnovers.
"We got open shots," said Phoenix guard Penny Hardaway, who scored 12 points. "Every time we got a rebound, we pushed the ball, made them play a full-court game. That wore them out."
After leading 48-33 at intermission, Phoenix built a 70-46 cushion on Marion's dunk with 4:46 left in the third quarter. The Knicks made a brief run, closing within 77-61 at the end of the period.
But the Suns took their biggest lead, 93-67, on former Knick John Wallace's jumper with 3:09 to play.
"We are a totally different team when we have the energy on defense and when we execute the game plan. And tonight we did that almost perfectly," Skiles said.