NBA

Nets’ Humphries still hearing boos from Knicks fans

Kris Humphries has endured jeers from opposing crowds all season long. But nobody has gotten on the Nets forward as hard as the fans at the Garden in his three trips there this season.

So Humphries couldn’t help but smile after his 14-point, 14-rebound performance helped the Nets to a 100-92 win over the Knicks last night that silenced the sellout crowd of 19,763 inside the Garden.

“Maybe we have a few people here, but 19 [thousand people] were a little upset … we like that,” said Humphries, who became gossip fodder this summer for his short-lived marriage to reality TV star Kim Kardashian. “Pretty much every arena I go into this year is hostile towards me, anyway, so I’m just out there playing.”

Much of the crowd’s anger was aimed at Humphries — both for his effectiveness in the paint and his skirmishes with Knicks center Tyson Chandler.

The two big men went at it repeatedly throughout the game, before things finally boiled over with 8:52 remaining. After Humphries was called for a foul on Chandler, leading to a media timeout, Chandler followed Humphries all the way back to the Nets’ huddle and grabbed his arm, earning him a technical foul.

“I didn’t think that I fouled him at first,” Humphries said. “I think he was just a little over-hyped and slapped me on the arm or something. It is what it is. We were just playing ball.”

Humphries and the Nets were there for the beginning of Linsanity on Feb. 4, and he admitted the Nets had come out with a point to prove.

“It feels great,” Humphries said. “It was a team effort. The coaches did a great job tonight preparing us, and I think defensively we did a lot better than we did the last time we were here.

“Everyone talks about the Nets-Knicks rivalry, and to me it’s just winning games.”