The Brooklyn Nets have a tough task ahead of them for at least the next month as they will have to try to win games without their best player, superstar Kevin Durant. Thursday was the first look at this Nets team without Durant and the outcome was disappointing.
Coming into Thursday’s 109-98 loss to the Boston Celtics, Brooklyn was down just Durant. More to that, the Celtics second-best player, Jaylen Brown, was ruled out due to right adductor tightness so that was less that the Nets had to worry about on defense. However, by the end of the game, even though Jayson Tatum 20 points on just 7-of-22 shooting from the field, Brooklyn allowed five other Celtics to score at least 11 points.
The Nets were able to hang around for the first three quarters thanks to the offense being effective and the defensive gameplan of keeping Tatum in check working to perfection. In the fourth quarter, it was a different story as the Celtics started the fourth quarter on a 12-2 run and didn’t look back. Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn spoke postgame about the defensive effort made to limit Tatum giving Brooklyn a chance to steal this game at home:
“Yeah, concerted effort. You know, it’s like football. You can’t take away the pass game, the run game and special teams. So, we decided to really give Tatum different bodies, different look, make it difficult for him, especially with brown (Jaylen) not playing. You give credit to those dudes for making shots. Their bigs, putbacks being at the rim, and then you give credit where we shouldn’t allow credit to be given. Where (Payton) Pritchard, (Sam) Hauser, (Luke) Kornet get offensive rebounds. Those are the things you can take care of. So, that has nothing to do with Tatum, that has nothing to do with the game plan. That is a want and keeping dudes off the glass.”
The Brooklyn Nets had their five-game winning streak at home snapped by the Celtics and are now 0-1 since Durant’s MCL injury.
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