Nets staring at possible first-round sweep after dropping Game 3 to Celtics
Nets' Kevin Durant speaks to an offical while playing the Boston Celtics at Barclays Center on Saturday, April 23, 2022. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
The Nets have navigated their way through this season with one eye on the finish line, harboring championship aspirations while hopping over one minefield after another. And now that end to the season — which they believed would feature them lifting the Larry O’Brien Trophy — could come Monday, when they face the possibility of a first-round sweep at the hands of the Boston Celtics.
The Nets have put their fate in the hands of their stars throughout this incarnation of the franchise, and after two subpar performances by Kevin Durant, the brightest of those stars, he and Kyrie Irving slipped almost into invisibility under the cloak of the Celtics’ smothering defense in Game 3.
And now the Nets, with a frustrating 109-103 loss at Barclays Center on Saturday night, face the humiliating ending to the season with all of the questions attached. What if Irving had gotten vaccinated and was a part of the team all season long? Would James Harden still be in Brooklyn forming a Big 3? Will Ben Simmons ever be that third wheel?
“Not much to say,” Irving said. “We know what it is. People in this locker room have been in this situation on the winning side or losing side. You’ve got to take lessons, learn what you can from this and get ready for Monday. No time to hold your head. No time to think about what everyone else is saying. Just go play basketball.”
“Man, we know what it is,” Durant said. “I don’t think no speech or anything [is] going to do [anything] at this point in the year. We know what it is. We’ve got another game on Monday. Just come out and play.”
This time, unlike the first two games in Boston when they squandered leads, the Nets felt as if they were desperately trying to fight their way into the game.
The desperation nearly paid off as Steve Nash reached down the bench and inserted Blake Griffin, who had not gotten into a game since April 2. And while Griffin provided a cause for celebration for the home crowd longing for a hero — hustling, scrapping and even draining a pair of three-point field goals in the fourth quarter — hoping that Griffin or Bruce Brown would be enough to counter the balanced Celtics roster was a dream that wouldn’t come true.
“I don’t know that we had the right spirit tonight,” Griffin said.
“We don’t got no time to think about, you know, what they got going on,” Jaylen Brown said. “We focused on us trying to be the best versions of ourselves and we live with the results.”
The Nets were built to depend on Durant and Irving — and the Celtics have made them seem ordinary. Former Nets assistant and first-year Boston head coach Ime Udoka has constructed a defense that has frustrated them.
Jayson Tatum lived up to his billing on both ends and so did teammate Brown, but the Boston stars were just a part of a complete team effort. Tatum had 39 points and six steals and Brown added 23 points.
Durant had 16 points but attempted only 11 shots and turned the ball over five times. Irving had 16 points and shot 6-for-17.
The Nets’ first bucket of the fourth quarter came on a fast break, Irving to Durant for a dunk. But that was a fleeting positive moment in a game lacking them for the Nets.
Irving was called for his fifth foul early in the fourth quarter and the Nets were left hoping a makeshift group could hang in.
A last gasp came with a pair of Durant free throws — his first trip to the line of the night after getting 20 free-throw attempts in Game 2 — and then a jumper by Irving with 4:38 left that pulled the Nets within eight. But Tatum found Al Horford for a corner three-pointer and then Tatum drove through traffic. After a timeout, Marcus Smart scored inside for a 15-point margin with 3:12 remaining.
“We would play good, a good stretch or two, and get that 11-, 12-point lead and then they bounced back,” Udoka said. “Some of our lack of rotations and turnovers on our end kind of got them back into it. So that was big going into the fourth quarter — get that cushion back up knowing they’re going to make another push — and I felt our physicality and attention to detail on certain guys is great.
“Durant to shoot just three threes and Irving going 0-for-7 [from three-point range], a lot of forced, tough contested ones, that kind of tells the story of how we’re defending in the pickup points and all the things that we’ve been talking about going into the last two games.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
