Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart scored 22 points and the Boston Celtics rolled to their sixth straight Win, smacking the all-star minus Brooklyn Nets 126-91 on Tuesday night.
Without Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving, the Nets were uncompetitive for their ninth straight loss. Boston jumped out to a 28-2 lead in a game that was never in doubt.
“I don’t know how many times or if we’ve ever been that good to start like that, but it felt good,” Brown said. “We knew some of these guys were out there. We wanted to take care of business early. We didn’t want to play and give them confidence and let them linger in the game.”
Harden missed his third straight game with a tight left Achilles tendon. Durant remains out with a sprained knee ligament and Irving still can’t play in home games because he’s not vaccinated against the Coronavirus.
Jayson Tatum scored 19 points as the Celtics continued their strong run and advanced past the nets to seventh place in the Eastern Conference.
The Nets were considered the favorites to win the east with their big three, but have lost 10 of 12 since Durant was wounds in mid-January.
They’ve just returned from a five-game winless trip in the West that ended with successive blowouts in Utah and Denver without Harden.
A few minutes after that, it was clear that they were heading for another.
The nets missed their first eight shots, while Boston raced to a 14-0 lead on Brown’s 3-pointers. Blake Griffin’s jumper put the nets on the board, but the Celtics answered with another 14-0 run that made it 28-2 on Tatum’s second consecutive layup.
“Honestly, he’s a very good starting Five who’s playing very good Basketball against a reserve lineup, so we’re asking you to play a very good NBA starting Five,” Nets coach Steve Nash said.
The lead in the first half peaked at 67-39 on Smarts 3-pointer and it was 69-43 at the Break.
“We had a game plan we wanted to go into and we followed it to the end,” Smart said.
Boston pitchers played less than 30 minutes, but still accumulated good statistics. Smart made six 3-pointers and Brown had nine assists and seven rebounds.
Jevon Carter scored 21 points on seven 3-pointers in Brooklyn’s worst loss of the season.
ADVICE
Celtics: Robert Williams had 12 points and 11 rebounds. … Boston snapped a four-game skid against Brooklyn.
Nets: Cs LaMarcus Aldridge (sprained left ankle) and Nic Claxton (sprained left thigh) remained out. … Brooklyn is 5-13 without Durant.
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Two days after Nash said the nets wouldn’t harden before Thursday’s deadline, it seemed they weren’t doing any business.
“Honestly, I think we will be exactly the same. I think the chances of deals or trades happening before the deadline are so small, especially for our group,” Nash said. “So my thoughts and attention are focused on this group and getting this thing set up when the guys recover and try to build it long-term.”