Celtics take off in second quarter en route to romping past Nets
Jarrett Jack #2 of the Brooklyn Nets looks on from the bench during the second half against the Boston Celtics at TD Garden on November 20, 2015 in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Celtics defeat the Brooklyn Nets 120-95. Credit: Getty Images / Maddie Meyer
The Nets giveth and the Celtics taketh away. It applies to first-round draft picks, sure, but in the Celtics' 120-95 rout at TD Garden Friday night, it applied to ball possession, open looks and just about every aspect of the game.
The Nets could not defend and the Celtics could not miss. Led by a 43-point second quarter, Boston proved that it owns more than the Nets' future. It owns their present, too.
"We played terrible," Thaddeus Young said. "That's the only thing we can say about the game."
Young and Brook Lopez led the Nets (2-11) with 14 points apiece. Avery Bradley had 21 points, Jae Crowder added 19 and Isaiah Thomas had 18 points and went 4-for-9 from three-point range for the Celtics.
The Nets shot 39.3 percent from the floor to the Celtics' 58.6 and went into the break trailing 66-42. "There's no excuse for the way we played," Young said.
All of this is great news for the Celtics and their fans in a way that spans far beyond a game in the standings. The Celtics own the Nets' unprotected first-round draft pick next year, and Boston fans have been licking their chops with every Nets folly, every second-half collapse, every step they take closer to the Eastern Conference basement. On Friday night, they just got to witness it in person.
"Obviously, in the big picture, the grand scheme of things, it's something a lot of people are talking about," Celtics coach Brad Stevens said before the game. The Celtics also own the Nets' 2018 first-round pick and can swap for first-rounders in 2017.
After the game, he added: "It was really only the one quarter where we outplayed them . . . the second quarter, we just made shots. We were really finding each other."
Were they ever. The Nets kicked off the second quarter with something of an unorthodox lineup, throwing in Sergey Karasev (who'd played only six minutes all season), Thomas Robinson and Bojan Bogdanovic, who scored four points total in his previous three games. And the Celtics? They feasted.
Thomas hit an open three-pointer with 4:02 left in the second quarter and Crowder followed it up 20 seconds later with one of his own. With a scream and a fist-pump, a fired-up Crowder opened a 51-37 lead that ballooned to completely unmanageable two minutes later.
At one point, the Celtics rattled off five straight shots (and five straight baskets), highlighted by back-to-back steals by Bradley under the Nets' basket. He converted the first one for a layup with 2:15 to go in the second half and the second when Young's attempted block produced a goaltending call.
Boston came into the game having forced a league-leading 18.8 turnovers per game. The Celtics scored 21 points on 20 turnovers Friday night.
"We played to their strengths," Lopez said. "We absolutely have to do better. This is not the team we are at all."
Notes & quotes: Karasev played 24 minutes after playing only six minutes in the first 12 games of the season-- this, after his father, Vasily, told a Russian publication that his son was talking about being traded because of lack of playing time. Sergey denied wanting to be traded. "I am with the Nets and I love this organization," he said at the morning shootaround. Coach Lionel Hollins took it in stride and said Karasev had not asked him to be traded. "Sergey's father is a father," Hollins said. "I'm a father. . . We all want our kids to be first position. He has his opinion and I understand that it comes from a father, but it's just that, it's his opinion."
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
