Brooklyn Nets look far and away like the best team in the Eastern Conference
By Criss Partee
The Brooklyn Nets are the best team in the East
Another day, another dominant 20-plus point victory for the Brooklyn Nets, and this time over a legit Eastern Conference contender in the Boston Celtics. The Nets cruised to a 28-point win, 123-95, though they went into halftime trailing 54-51.
Not only did the Nets win by 28 points, but Kyrie Irving also set a new Nets Christmas Day record with the 37 points he dropped. Irving broke the previous record of 36 points set by Michael Ray Richardson in 1984 against the New York Knicks.
The Nets played a sloppy game in the first half with 12 turnovers in the first two quarters. They cleaned that up in the second half, only committing three turnovers on their way to outscoring the Celtics 72-41 in that second half.
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The Celtics were able to keep this one close until the third quarter when Kevin Durant exploded for 16 of his 29 points. The Celtics had no answer for Durant as he proceeded to take over the game as only KD can. Durant started the game off slow, but with Irving cooking like he was from the jump, that did not matter much in the end.
The Celtics, led by their young duo of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown as usual, but ultimately their contributions would not even come close to being enough to get a ‘W’ in this one.
Brown led the Celtics with 27 points and added eight rebounds, while Tatum posted just 20 points with eight rebounds of his own.
The Celtics clearly miss Kemba Walker, their starting point guard, and with no set return date in sight for Walker, the C’s have to figure this out without him for an extended period to start the season.
On opening night against the Milwaukee Bucks, the Celtics did not look nearly as overmatched as they did on Christmas against Durant, Irving, and the Nets. It just feels like a bad matchup for the Celtics this season, regardless of Walker being available or not. Only time will tell. Or, perhaps the Brooklyn Nets are simply that much better than the rest of the Eastern Conference.
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Either way, it’s been an extremely impressive first two games for the Brooklyn Nets.