While it was an off night shooting the ball for Kyrie Irving, scoring 15 points on just 4-of-19 shooting from the field, he still impacted the game in other areas, finishing with 11 assists, nine rebounds and four steals in the Brooklyn Nets’ 109-104 victory over the Boston Celtics, which puts them in sole possession of first place in the Eastern Conference.
“He didn’t have his typical scoring night, but it’s few and far between that he doesn’t score the ball at a prolific rate,” Nets coach Steve Nash said. “He didn’t, but he definitely disrupted the basketball defensively and overall he draws a lot of attention, so I thought he was great in a lot of different ways than we’re accustomed to.”
The Celtics, down by 17 with just over 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter, went on a 18-4 run capped off a Jayson Tatum 3-pointer to make it a 98-95 game with 3:32 left in regulation, which prompted the Nets to take a timeout.
In the first possession out of the timeout, the Nets responded with a Harris three. The Celtics then tried to push it up the court, but Payton Pritchard missed the heavily contested transition layup as Irving secured the board and pushed it to the half-court line before feeding it to Jeff Green ahead of him for the momentum shifting fastbreak dunk.
Irving was still struggling to find his shot down the stretch, but he channeled his energy towards the other side of the ball and forced a key turnover with the Nets up by five, as he formed a brick wall with his 6-foot-2 frame just past the half-court line and clamped down on the bigger Tatum to cause him to lose control of the ball out of bounds at the 1:12 mark in the final period.
“As a competitor I was just trying to go out there and do the little things, the small details, picking guys up or just being in the right position,” Irving said. “When you don’t have your legs on the offensive end, I felt like I was getting to where I wanted to go. A few angles, right, left, short, this that, just continuing to play, just continuing to have that mentality, next play, and I can have an impact with my teammates on both ends of the floor, just making the right play. It’s a simple game when you’ve got teammates that are out there that are in the right spots and they’re fulfilling their roles too.”
In the third, the Celtics fought back after trailing by as many as 14 in the quarter and cut the Nets’ lead down to six at the 3:40 mark. With the score still 76-70 a little over a minute later, Blake Griffin took the charge just outside the restricted area from a driving and kicking Evan Fournier, which served as a prelude to a momentum shifter.
On the other end, Harris put in the driving layup off the rebound from a missed shot attempt that leaked out to the left corner.
Back on defense, Griffin took another charge just outside the restricted area, this time from Marcus Smart.
“Blake’s a beast,” Bruce Brown said. “He’s doing everything for us.”
With Boston going ice cold, Harris capped off Brooklyn’s 10-0 surge with back-to-back triples, which forced the Celtics into a timeout.
Griffin finished off his solid night with 13 points, five rebounds and three assists. Harris had a team-high 20 points to go along with four rebounds and three assists. Green added 19 points and three assists. DeAndre Jordan chipped in eight points, 11 rebounds and three assists.
Tatum put up a game-high 38 points to go with 10 rebounds and four assists. Pritchard came off the bench to score 22 points.
Brown Goes Viral
Bruce Brown took advantage of the open lane down the middle, as he came in off the ball and threw down the monster slam to posterize Luke Kornet off the feed from Irving, who was triple-teamed underneath the basket.
Brown provided a spark off the bench with 15 points and eight rebounds.
