Irving, Celtics edge Nets
USA TODAY BOSTON — The Boston Celtics squandered several opportunities to put away the pesky Nets before Kyrie Irving ended the comebacks.
Irving scored 28 points, hitting a pair of free throws with 7.7 seconds left after his teammates struggled from the line, and the Celtics held off the Nets, 108-105, on Sunday.
“You’ve got to give credit to just how talented that team is. They play extremely hard for all 48 minutes,” said Irving, who also had eight rebounds. “We had to take the challenge on every single possession.”
Al Horford notched 10 points, 10 rebounds and three blocks, Marcus Morris added 15 points and Terry Rozier scored 14 as Boston closed 2017 by winning three straight and four of five.
Rondae Hollis-Jefferson had 22 points and 12 rebounds and Caris LeVert scored 16 for the Nets, who could not overcome 10 turnovers in the second half.
“They’re a team that’s not going to give up,” Rozier said. “They’ve got a lot of shooters, which opens up a lot for them. They use it to their advantage. That’s a tough team.”
The Celtics won their seventh straight against the Nets, although Boston didn’t have the game in hand until Irving made a pair of free throws with 7.7 seconds remaining. Boston went the final 4:27 without a field goal and struggled from the foul line, going 16 for 25 in the game, and missed several opportunities to put the Nets away.
“We stayed poised to make a comeback,” Hollis-Jefferson said. “That’s basketball. Sometimes it goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t. But for us now we’re definitely competing. It starts with the starting unit, we’ve got to come out that way. And I feel like the effort’s there.
“Sometimes you’ll have a slipup like we did at the beginning of the first quarter, but it’s the overall outcome that you kind of want to base it on and we kind of stayed with it,” Hollis-Jefferson said. “Give them credit. Boston’s a really good team.”