Nets fall short vs. Celtics
BOSTON — This time when Boston broke the Nets’ hearts, it didn’t have anything to do with bad deals or bygone draft picks.
It had to do with the Nets playing their tails off, fighting back from double-digit deficit after double-digit deficit, only to miss a potential gametying shot in the waning seconds. It had to do with taking the Eastern Conference-leading Celtics to the wire, only to fall 108-105 on New Year’s Eve.
The Nets trailed by 14 midway through the fourth quarter and 103-93 with 2 ½ minutes left before storming back with a 10-2 run to get within two. Marcus Smart making just one of two free throws with 15.2 seconds remaining gave them a shot to tie with a 3pointer, but Spencer Dinwiddie missed, thrown off by Boston’s switch to a zone.
“I just rushed it,” Dinwiddie said. “When I caught it I didn’t realize how open I was just because of the zone look. I assumed somebody was going to be there. I was prepared to shoot a contested shot, I rushed it.”
Boston’s Kyrie Irving — acquired in the offseason using the Nets’ 2018 firstround pick — went to the line and iced it amid wellearned chants of “MVP! MVP!” He had a game-high 28 points and sealed it after Dinwiddie’s miss.
“If he could’ve got closer, a little tighter [it would have been better],” coach Kenny Atkinson said. “Not sure if they were in zone or man, but they botched a switch and he came off. Even so, it was longer than we wanted.”
In a brutally honest evaluation, Atkinson had graded his team below-av- erage, and told them so.
“Like a lot of mediocre to below-average teams, we’re searching for consistency. That’s the magic sauce we’re looking for,” Atkinson had said before the game. “I tell our guys I’d grade us as a below-average team. We’re not in that average window yet. That’s where we’ve got to get to, and consistency, that’s what we’re looking for.”
After their best win of the season Friday in Miami, the Nets might have been just as good on Sunday behind Rondae HollisJefferson (team-high 22 points, game-high 12 rebounds) and Caris LeVert (16 points, seven assists). But Boston was just that much better.
As usual, the Nets dug themselves an early hole. They trailed 16-5, and 43-30. But Brooklyn responded with a 16-4 run and eventually knotted it four times in the third quarter, the last at 67-all when LeVert found HollisJefferson for a layup. But that’s when the Nets conceded a 12-1 run that proved too much to undo, Marcus Morris’ 3 giving Boston a 79-68 edge.
“They changed the way we were playing defense on the ballscreens, and I got tripled a couple times because I hadn’t adjusted to it yet,” LeVert said.
“They ratcheted up their pressure, and that’s where Caris, he’s going to have to make progress [when] teams turn up their pressure a little more, just getting us into stuff and getting us into what we want and being a little bit more patient,” Atkinson said. “We’ll get there. We’ll get better.”