Thursday night, it was the No. 2 team in the West. Friday brought the No. 2 seed in the East, and the Nets got the same outcome in a different building.
Brooklyn fell to the Boston Celtics 148-111 at TD Garden, dropping to 15-44 and tying its longest losing streak of the season at seven games, even with a clean injury report on the second night of a back-to-back. The Nets committed just 11 turnovers and shot 48.9%, but Boston shredded them from the perimeter, going 22-for-34 from deep with 39 assists on 52 made field goals.
That’s what a contender looks like.
The Nets did come out with some bite. After falling behind by five, they answered with a 7-0 burst out of a timeout to take their first lead, with Nolan Traoré driving the whole thing. He got into the paint, drew help and kicked to open shooters, forcing Boston to work early. The Celtics weren’t bothered.
Derrick White hit back-to-back 3s to wake up the building, and after Brooklyn responded again, Baylor Scheierman buried Boston’s fifth 3-pointer in five tries to push the Celtics back up six. The shot-making never stopped. Brooklyn stayed close anyway because it played offense well enough to hang around, at least for a quarter.
Josh Minott had a lot to do with that.
After playing only garbage-time minutes in Thursday’s loss to the Spurs, Minott got first-quarter rotation run against his former team and immediately reintroduced himself. With 59 seconds left, he threw down a two-handed transition dunk over Hugo Gonzalez that cut the deficit to three and put Gonzalez on a poster. Then, with 0.6 seconds left, Minott followed a Danny Wolf miss from deep with a put-back dunk that made it a three-point game again.
Minott finished with nine points and two in 16 minutes, and his first real minutes in a Nets rotation came with real impact.
Brooklyn’s opening quarter was one of its better ones in recent games. The Nets scored 32 points, their most in a first quarter since Feb. 7, and shot 52%. The problem was Boston’s start was obscene. The Celtics opened 6-for-6 from 3-point range, shot 70% in the quarter and still led 35-32. Brooklyn also went 2-for-5 at the line, leaving points behind in a game where you can’t afford giveaways of any kind.
That theme grew in the first half. The Nets took care of the ball, with just four turnovers through two quarters, and they made one fewer field goal than Boston. It didn’t matter because the Celtics hit 12 3-pointers to Brooklyn’s six, and Brooklyn left three points at the stripe. Boston scored 66 points on 61.5% shooting and led 66-57 at the break.
Michael Porter Jr. had 13 points on 5-for-9 shooting at halftime and finished with 18 points on 6-for-12 shooting to lead Brooklyn. Jaylen Brown and Nikola Vucevic paced Boston with 28 points apiece, while Payton Pritchard added 22.
Then the game got uglier.
On Boston’s first possession of the second half, Brown knocked down the Celtics’ 13th 3-pointer to push the lead to 69-57, their largest of the night at that point. With 9:02 left in the third quarter, it was 79-65, and Brooklyn was stuck chasing for the rest of the night.
The Nets did make one last run, though. An 8-0 burst sparked by an Egor Dëmin 3 cut it to six and forced a timeout. But Boston came out of the huddle and drilled another 3 anyway, and that was the game. Brooklyn kept competing, but the Celtics kept scoring, kept moving the ball and kept finding clean looks.
Boston won the third quarter 43-26 and took a 26-point lead into the fourth. There was no comeback coming. Grant Nelson, signed to a 10-day contract earlier in the afternoon, saw garbage minutes late alongside Wolf, Ben Saraf, Jalen Wilson and Ochai Agbaji.
The Nets return home Sunday to face the Cleveland Cavaliers at Barclays Center looking to avoid a season-worst skid. Brooklyn lost 112-84 at Rocket Arena on Feb. 19.
