Brooklyn Nets vs. Boston Celtics preview: Nets begin another back-to-back

Dallas Mavericks (98) Vs. Boston Celtics (105) At TD Garden (2024 NBA Finals, Game 2) — Photo by Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

The road doesn’t get easier for the Brooklyn Nets as they travel to Boston to take on the reigning NBA Champions.

Moving down the line. The Brooklyn Nets were on the road to face the Chicago Bulls on Thursday night. The Nets got out to a big lead early, but couldn’t hold and wound up losing.

The opponent tonight is trying to make it to the playoffs in one piece. The Boston Celtics have no chance of catching the Cleveland Cavaliers for the No. 1 seed, but still have a beeline on the second seed and third best overall record in the league. The champs were on the road last night to face the Miami Heat and won 103-91. At 48-19, they have a healthy lead over the New York Knicks for the Atlantic Division crown.

Where to follow the game

YES Network on TV, Gotham Sports on the app. WFAN on the radio. Tip after 6 PM.

Injuries

No Noah Clowney, Nic Claxton, De’Anthony Melton, Trendon Watford, or Cam Thomas. The Nets are playing five games in a seven-day stretch so Claxton, Watford and Thomas are on injury management.

Night two of a back-to-back so we’ll see who’s out by the afternoon. Kristaps Porzingis has been dealing with a non-COVID illness for a while now, and it’s unknown if he’ll return tonight.

The game

Boston won the first two meetings in November. They wrap the season series up next week.

This is the first night of a back-to-back for the Nets. They’re back home at Barclays to play the Atlanta Hawks on Sunday night.

If it’s close in the fourth quarter, the Nets will try to reverse a season long trend. As Collin Helwig noted in his latest Takeaways story, the Nets are -75 in the fourth quarter, worst in the NBA.

So when do you get the respect a person of your resume deserves? When you’ve accomplished so much at a young age with so much more to go, you’d think people would acknowledge you as a superstar and consider you the very best of the best. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case for Jayson Tatum. JT gets disrespected pretty much everywhere you turn outside of Boston, and it’s really a shame since he’s such a tremendous player. Over at the mothership, Oliver Fox spoke about JT and said:

He’s a private guy, and namely didn’t say he wanted to be the “face of the league” in his statement of purpose I mentioned above. That’s not to say he doesn’t feel disrespected or isn’t marketable, but he’s certainly not the in-your-face celebrity that some want him to be. He has always cared more about his family and his game than being in the next Space Jam or Thunderstruck, being a player-GM or going after his haters on social media. But he’s his own kind of superstar, one who may ultimately win several championships and retire a surefire Hall of Famer. That’s who he is, and those who want him to be something else will be waiting a long time.

And that’s all good… because getting to that level in the first place is so rare. He’s snowballing a career together that might make him the third-best Celtic in history, and we should all appreciate the glorious player he is rather than worrying about who he isn’t, and probably never will be. Because it’s not about the forest of NBA history, it’s about each, individual, really awesome-looking tree.

With this being night two of a b2b, it’s unsure if he’ll suit up. If he does, the Nets will do their best to force him into difficult jumpers. He can make them of course, but if you up the difficulty just a little bit, maybe that will be enough to keep him from another dominant performance at Barclays.

After Thursday’s game, Jordi Fernandez lamented the amount of midrange jumpers his team took. For their sake, they’re gonna need to fix that tonight. Boston leads the league in threes attempted per game (48.3) and are sixth in efficiency (37 percent). Unfortunately for the Nets, they are 26th in efficiency (34.4 percent) despite being 11th in attempts (38.7). Sometimes, teams catch heaters from deep on random nights. With Thomas out, the Nets will do their best to try and makeup for his absence against the Division’s best team.

That means we might have to ask Cam Johnson to do a bit more tonight. CJ has met every challenge this season

Player to watch: Jrue Holiday

To repeat as NBA champions, it takes everyone on the roster contributing. We know the big names that have to take on the scoring responsibility, but the non-scorers are just as important. Enter Jrue Holiday. Holiday was a critical part of Boston’s run last year and does a little bit of everything for his team. Considering Boston’s likely road to the Finals, his work on the defensive end will take on even more importance. Over at Celtics Blog, Ben Paradis wrote:

“That’s where Jrue’s impact is felt the most—not in his stats, but in the way he commands the Celtics’ defense. Even with Derrick White, Jaylen Brown, and Jayson Tatum ranking among the league’s top perimeter defenders, Jrue’s savvy veteran presence is the glue that holds everything together. Like a quarterback commanding the offense, Holiday orchestrates the Celtics’ perimeter defense to perfection. With his incredible basketball IQ, he diagnoses coverages, switches seamlessly, and makes life miserable for opposing guards. Holiday’s defensive toolbox simply can’t be replaced.

With the Celtics staring down a gauntlet of dominant Eastern Conference guards in the playoffs, Holiday’s health is paramount. Tyrese Haliburton, Damian Lillard, and the Cleveland duo could all be standing in the way of Boston’s championship aspirations.”

Perimeter defense takes on even greater importance in the postseason, and having Holiday at full strength will go a long way to securing the Celtics’ first back-to-back championship since 1969. That stat kinda threw me for a loop, I have to admit.

With Thomas out and this being the first half of a b2b, we’ll see how far Jordi Fernandez pushes D’Angelo Russell tonight. DLo has only crossed the 30 minute threshold once as a member of the Nets, and they’re going to need a big game out of him tonight if they want to pull off the upset. Boston has plenty of guard depth even when Holiday hits the bench, so there won’t be any easy options for Russell here.