Fall Again Arcando & Daniel Garrick Flac
BOSTON — Everybody said Kevin Durant wouldn't struggle as desperately Midweek dark in Game 2 against the Celtics as he had in the Nets' serial-opening loss Lord's day.
They were right. He was worse.
And Kyrie Irving struggled correct aslope him in the Nets' 114-107 loss before a sellout crowd of xix,156 at TD Garden.
The Nets led by equally many as 17 points late in the second quarter but blew that, then coughed up a thirteen-2 run that spanned into the fourth and left them downward 96-92. They never recovered, and now trail the first-round series 2-0.
Durant finished with a team-loftier 27 points, merely shot four-for-17 with six turnovers. Only an 18-for-xx night from the gratis-throw line made Durant's totals look proficient.
Irving, after a 39-point eruption in Game 1, was held to but ten points, on iv-for-thirteen shooting.
"They're being concrete. They're upward and into [Durant], grabbing him, holding him, all that stuff you come up to expect," Nets omnibus Steve Nash said of the Celtics' defense. "He's been uncomfortable and hasn't looked like he's quite been able to go his rhythm."
Uncomfortable is an understatement.
In the Nets' two losses, Durant is shooting but 31.7 percent (13-for-41 overall). It'due south the first time in his career he has shot nether 40 percent and committed at to the lowest degree six turnovers in consecutive games.
"They're playing ii or three guys on me sometimes when I'm off the brawl, mucking upward actions when I run off stuff," Durant said. "I see [Al] Horford leaving his man and coming over to hit me sometimes. At that place's ii or three guys hitting me wherever I go. That'south just the nature of the animal in the playoffs."
Boston has been more beastly so far these playoffs.
Teams that become up 2-0 in a 7-game serial win 92.4 per centum of the time (302-25).
And the Nets? They're a winless 0-7 on the other cease of that equation.
Game 3 will be Sabbatum at Barclays Center, where the Nets have failed to cultivate any sort of habitation-courtroom advantage in the regular season. That had better change in the postseason, or it could spell a get-go-circular go out.
"I think our intensity dropped a niggling bit in the second half. Made a big deviation," Nash said. "Thought they connected to be physical."
Said Irving: "I concur in role with that assessment with Steve in terms of our intensity. But us as players on the court, we've got to control that and rise to the occasion. Just unproblematic as that."
Bruce Dark-brown (23 points, eight rebounds) personally outscored his hometown team 9-0 in the starting time two:33 to give the Nets an early lead they spent near of the remainder of the dark trying — and failing — to protect.
They pulled ahead 62-45 on a running Durant pull-up with 1:45 left in the first one-half. But the Nets take had issues endmost out quarters all season, and that came dorsum to bite them not once, but twice, every bit they gave away another game.
The Nets coughed up a 25-10 run that has spanned the intermission, fueled by Boston's switching, long-armed defense. Jayson Tatum (xix points, 10 assists) found Horford for a 3-arrow to make information technology 72-68 with 8:12 left in the 3rd, and when Durant was stripped past Jaylen Brown (22 points), information technology turned into a Tatum dunk that pulled the Celtics within 72-seventy with 7:38 to go in the quarter.
Seth Back-scratch's 3-pointer temporarily stanched the haemorrhage, and Durant hit 2 from the line to put the Nets upwards 77-70 with just under seven minutes left. But Boston kept coming.
Durant missed a pair of free throws and Grant Williams hitting two on the other end to cut the Nets' lead to 79-77. And Daniel Theis' jumper in the lane erased it altogether, pulling Boston even with three:13 remaining in the third.
Later on Smart knotted it at 81-all, the Nets mounted a 7-0 run that put them ahead. Patty Mills' three-arrow made information technology 88-81 with ane:18 remaining in the third. Just it didn't last.
Even subsequently the Nets went dorsum up 90-83, they surrendered a xiii-two run.
Payton Pritchard'due south xx-foot stride back put Boston alee for the showtime time, 94-92 with 7:49 to play. And after Irving lost the ball out of bounds, Jaylen Chocolate-brown's driving layup left the Nets in a four-point hole.
They never recovered.
"We do desire into their air space. I think we did that," Celtics coach Ime Udoka said of his strategy against Durant.
"We want to make him work defensively and offensively have bodies on him the whole time. Try to wear him down. It takes the effort of everyone getting on him and knowing the game plan."
Source: https://nypost.com/2022/04/20/kevin-durant-struggles-again-as-nets-fall-into-2-0-hole-vs-celtics/
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