After a hard fought game, the Nets fell 121-110 to the
Boston Celtics in TD Garden on Thanksgiving Eve. This ended their streak of
winning four games in a row. A feat they haven’t accomplished since last March.
However that wasn’t the main story line of this matchup.
It was the fact that former Celtic Kyrie Irving was going to
be missing what would have been his first time returning to Boston to face his
former team. There was certainly no love lost between the Boston fans and
number 11, and that was shown both prior to tipoff and during the game on
Wednesday night.
Outside of TD Garden there were large posters up of Irving’s
face with the word “Coward” plastered over it. During the game Celtics fans
chanted “Kyrie sucks” repeatedly. This all amounted to Irving posting a
response in his Instagram story.
“It happens all the time and tonight just shows how
sports/entertainment will always be ignorant and obtrusive. It’s one big show
that means very very little in the real world that most people live in because
there are actually things that matter going on within it,” said Irving. “Love
for the art is the only damn thing that keeps the purist people in this giant
sports/entertainment circus. Don’t fall for the game that’s played in front of
you as entertainment, it’ll never be as serious [as] dealing with life.”
One could say that fueled the Nets, at least early on
because they led the Celtics 63-57 at the half. The Celtics were 12-4 going
into this matchup and have been playing great on both ends of the floor. They
have the 10th ranked offense and 7th ranked defense in
the league.
Unfortunately for the Nets it was a tale of two halves. In
the first half Brooklyn shot 53.2% from the field and 44% from behind the arc.
In the second half they shot 34.9 % from the field and 31% from behind the arc.
“They came out, they punched us in the mouths first, and we
had to react to them,” said Marcus Smart. “So in the second half we made them
adjust to us a little bit.”
Not to mention Kemba Walker dropped 39 points and hit six of
his 10 three pointers in his first game back from a neck sprain that sidelined
him for one game. It was his first time sitting out after playing 159 games
straight. Walker looked as if he didn’t miss a step, leading both teams with
scoring nine points in the fourth quarter after it was 91-86 Celtics at the end
of the third.
Overall despite matching up pretty evenly both in field goal
and three point percentage, the Celtics were more relentless on the boards,
including grabbing 19 offensive ones to the Nets’ 11. They also did a good job
of keeping the Nets out of the paint. Brooklyn averages 50.3 PPG in the paint.
On Wednesday they only scored 38.
“You just stay with it. We’ve all seen many times when teams
get hot, and it’s just hard to sustain throughout the course of the whole
game,” said Head Coach Brad Stevens. “We knew how urgent we had to play coming
right out of the gate in the second half, because of the way that they felt in
the first.”