BSJ Game Report: Nets 121, Celtics 109 – Marcus Smart's return not enough to cool off Kyrie Irving, James Harden

Everything you need to know about the Celtics’ 121-109 loss to the Brooklyn Nets with BSJ insight and analysis:

Box Score

Too much Kyrie Irving and James Harden. They combined for 62 of Brooklyn’s 121 points. The Celtics simply had no answer, especially for Irving, who torched them for 40 points on 15-23 shooting, including 5-8 on 3-pointers. Harden was two assists shy of a triple-double. 

“When you go back and watch the film tonight, there are plays we could have been better with, gambles where we took ourselves out of position, reaches where we took ourselves out of position,” Brad Stevens said after the game. “But that’s your margin when you play these guys. Just super low. We just have to really, really cross all T’ and dot all I’s when you play against these guys on every possession.”

Landry Shamet cashed in on C’s mistakes. Shamet had 18 points, all on 3-pointers (he was 6-9 from deep), and all on chances he got when the Celtics were slow to react to Brooklyn’s ball movement.

“We were slow in our rotations. Just a half a second,” Marcus Smart said after the game. “We’ve gotta be a step quicker than what we were tonight.”

Marcus Smart returned. He only played 21 minutes, but they we saw some good ol’ Marcus Smart winning plays. He came off the bench and basically played the final five minutes of every quarter. 

“Great to have him back out on the floor,” Stevens said. “The 5-minute stints suck. Right? It is what it is. There’s only so many ways to manage that.” 

TURNING POINT

With 3:25 left in the fourth quarter, Daniel Theis missed a 3-pointer at the top of the key and Brooklyn came down and found Kyrie Irving for a 3-pointer. 

TOP PLAYS

Your daily Robert Williams eye-popping dunk.

[embed]https://twitter.com/celtics/status/1370203891975950339[/embed]

THREE UP 

Jayson Tatum:  Taum had 31 in the game to carry the Celtics, especially in the second half where he scored 20 of those points on 8-11 shooting. There was a stretch to start the fourth quarter where things were getting away from the Celtics, but Tatum’s reentry kept the game close until that final three minutes.

Daniel Theis: He was huge to start the second half and one of the keys to a big 9-0 run that gave the Celtics their biggest lead in this game. He also shot 7-10 from the field. 

Marcus Smart: Smart had a very “Marcus Smart” game. He dove on the floor, had a huge blocked shot, drew a charge on a pick-setter, and he was getting guys organized on the floor. I’ve mentioned that a lot in his absence, and here’s what I’m talking about:

[embed]https://twitter.com/RedsArmy_John/status/1370199369509638152[/embed]

This just wasn’t happening in February. No one on the floor has the team organized quite like Smart.

THREE DOWN

Jaylen Brown: He hit some big shots late in the game, but he had a rough overall night, shooting 5-23, and 3-12 on 3-pointers. He had some rough stretches defensively as well. 

Kemba Walker: He came out blistering hot, hitting four out of his first five shots and scoring 9 points in the first quarter. Then, he disappeared, shooting 1-7 the rest of the way and only scoring two more points.

“I thought they paid a lot of attention to Kemba, there’s a lot of length out there on the floor,” Stevens said after the game. “I thought that he generated some good looks. I thought maybe we could have gone to him a few other times late there because he’s great at generating a look but he’s also great at handling extra attention and making the right pass.”

Grant Williams: Another rough night off the bench for him. He was on the floor to start the fourth quarter and got switched onto James Harden a couple of times. That didn’t go well.  

TWO TAKES KARALIS WILL PROBABLY REGRET LATER

This was a frustrating loss, but also a more acceptable one than we’ve seen over the past month-and-a-half. 

“They executed better, they did what they were supposed to do, and they came out with the win,” Smart said after the game. “We came out and we played. We ran things right, we got chances after chances. We just gotta execute them better, and that’s all you can ask from the players. Like I said, our effort was there, and I can live with a loss when the effort is there. I can’t live with a loss when there’s no effort.”

I said before the game that I wanted to see the team try harder than they have and then let the chips fall where they may. The Nets are a favorite to win the championship and we saw why in this game. 

The Celtics were so afraid of Irving and Harden that they let really good shooters in Shamet and Joe Harris get incredibly good looks. 

There are plenty of losses on the schedule that will draw people’s ire. This shouldn’t be one of them. 

One more thing about Marcus Smart. The Celtics might have won this game if they had him for 10 more minutes. The vision of Grant Williams switched onto Harden was haunting. Stevens could have tried someone else, but who besides Smart would you want on James freakin’ Harden? 

And it’s not that Smart would have gotten all of the stops in that situation, it’s that he had a better chance. And, frankly, he might have been just better in the double-teams that went so wrong and kept Brooklyn close enough for Irving and Harden to crank it up and run away.