Jaylen Brown wasted no time holding the Celtics’ feet to the fire on Friday night.
Boston and Brooklyn met for the second time in as many games, this time on TD Garden’s lucky green NBA Cup parquet. But
luck wasn’t on the Celtics’ side. The Nets erupted in the second quarter, outscoring Boston 40-25, setting a dangerous tone for the second half. The Celtics, riding a three-game winning streak, desperately tried to hold off a lowly two-win Brooklyn team from pulling off its biggest upset of the season.
The plan, however, fell apart, and Brown’s patience wore thin in the aftermath of the 113-105 loss.
“What’s my initial takeaway? Come ready to play or don’t come at all,” Brown said. “That’s my whole thing. We gotta come ready to play. We just went through the motions today — like, I don’t understand it.”
Brown continued: “Overall, just a lackluster game from the Celtics.”
Michael Porter Jr. scored a game-high 32 points for Brooklyn, complemented by Nic Claxton’s first-career triple-double (18 points, 12 rebounds, 11 assists) and rookie Egor Dëmin’s efficient 12-point contribution. Boston lost control of the game once the Nets turned a 43-43 second-quarter deadlock into a swift 19-10 run, building a nine-point halftime advantage. From there, the Celtics repeatedly struggled to regain momentum and assert any form of control over Brooklyn.
Quickly, that became Brooklyn’s theme: blue-collar runs fueled by exploiting Boston’s energy-depleted offense, keeping the Celtics in the rearview mirror.
“We didn’t find enough stops to be able to get out and run in the end of the second, end of the third — especially the second,” Brown recalled. “They had a 40-point quarter in the second quarter, and then the end of that third gave them the separation they needed in this game.”
Brown, limited to 32 minutes, was forced to the bench after picking up his fifth foul with 5:52 remaining in the third quarter. Sensing an opportunity with Boston’s alpha sidelined, the Nets capitalized with a 17-4 run, stretching a 71-68 lead to 88-72 in the final two minutes of the quarter. The Celtics repeatedly found themselves within striking distance, but they couldn’t muster enough grit to match Brooklyn’s determination, which carried the Nets from the opening tip to the final buzzer.
In Brown’s eyes, the issues that plagued the Celtics and led to their 1-2 tournament record were quite simple.
“We just gotta come out and play with great energy, great enthusiasm for the game — like, want to win,” Brown said. “It just didn’t seem like that was the case tonight.”
Deficiencies piled up for the Celtics throughout the night. They never held a lead greater than six points, struggled from deep — shooting just 11-of-34 (32%) from three — and Derrick White logged a 2-of-13 output in 33 minutes.
In the fourth quarter, the Celtics faced their final chance at redemption with the score at 96-94 and 5:16 remaining in favor of the Nets — and squandered it. Jordan Walsh slammed home a dunk to bring Boston within a basket of tying or taking the lead. But as Brooklyn sensed the momentum slipping, Dëmin responded on the next possession with a gut-punch 3-pointer, sparking a final 17-9 run to bury the Celtics.
Even though 25 of their 48 missed shots came from midrange or layup attempts, Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla doesn’t see that as any sort of overarching theme.
“I don’t know that the story of this game is solely on our missed layups,” Mazzulla said. “I think a lot of it has to do with both — the Nets played really, really well, and we got off to a good start, but they played better than us throughout most of the game. I think that’s the bigger story: a little bit of our offensive breakdown, but our defensive lapses — our off-ball execution or our individual tendencies and game plan stuff there. So we just gotta continue to get better at that.”
Boston didn’t tally a single 30-plus-point quarter while allowing two to Brooklyn — a stark contrast to four days ago, when the Celtics held the Nets to an astounding 14 points in the fourth quarter.
“I thought they played better than they did the other night for sure — I have to give credit to them,” Mazzulla admitted. “And we didn’t play as well. I think it was that simple.”
