BOSTON — The Nets have suffered many massacres in Boston.
This had to be one of the worst.
Brooklyn got hammered 136-86 before a sellout crowd of 19,156 at TD Garden, a rout that doesn’t begin to tell the story of this desultory non-effort.
Maybe their minds were already wandering, looking ahead to the All-Star break.
“We’ll see that pretty, pretty early. I think there’s human nature. Guys who are leaving have booked flights and hotels. You don’t go into All-Star breaking making your plans after the game. They’ve already done that. So it’s in their mind. It’s human nature,” Jacque Vaughn said. “But we talked about this morning is you have a job to do. And we have a job [vs. Boston], and that is to try to win this basketball game on the road and then we’ll go into All-Star break after the game.”
It didn’t happen. The Nets (21-33) took a beating, trailing by 18 in the first quarter, 37 in the second and a mind-bending 46 to end the third.
But 56 in the fourth looked like a misprint. Or a nightmare.
“[The game] is not perfect. But your intent is what we want to be 100 percent perfect. So if we’re supposed to have a coverage and it’s difficult to do, you have a choice to decide if you’re going to do it or not. And that’s where the physicality fits into,” Vaughn said before the game. “We have a plan against these dudes. It’s not easy. They’re pretty good. Are you going to work at it? And when it becomes tough, what are you going to do?
“And so those are the instances where we’ve relented at times, which is not good. We talked about [you’re] supposed to sprint back every single time, but Jayson Tatum had two leak out layups. Is that a blown coverage, is that effort, is that I just wasn’t locked-in on that defensive end of the floor? It didn’t matter that much to me this possession, I didn’t get a shot on the other end. So you continuously ask yourself why things happen throughout the course of the game.”
The Nets have dropped 10 of their last 11 meetings against the Celtics, 14 of 15 including the postseason.
But right now, the playoffs — or even the play-in — is more and more looking like something the Nets won’t have to worry about this season.
The Nets trail Atlanta by 2 ½ for the final Eastern Conference play-in spot heading into the break, and just 28 games on the slate when they come out.
And nothing about this effort — or frankly this season — engenders a lot of confidence that this is the squad to overturn even this modest deficit.
After the Nets had lost Tuesday night at Barclays Center because they couldn’t contain Tatum — who had 30 of his 41 points in the first half, before a late Nets rally fell short — this time they lost because they frankly didn’t show up.
Tatum’s 20 points were barely needed.
The only thing the Nets challenged all evening was the fewest points in a league game this season, Portland’s 77.
The Nets were intent on switching, as is their wont. But even without Jaylen Brown, the Celtics had too many answers.
Guards Cam Thomas and Dennis Schröder — the latter making his first start as a Net — predictably struggled on defense.
Derrick White had 27 points, and backup Peyton Pritchard had a game-high 28 on 11 of 16 shooting, 6 of 9 from deep.
But arguably just as concerning for the Nets were Thomas and Schröder’s offensive woes.
Thomas, who entered the game second on the team averaging 21.5 points, was held to just five on 1-of-9 shooting.
And trade deadline acquisition Schröder, starting at point guard with Ben Simmons still not cleared for back-to-backs, had just four points and one assist.
Trendon Watford led Brooklyn with 15 off the bench, and Mikal Bridges was the only other Net in double figures with 10.
The Nets stumbled right from the start, down 14-4 out of the gate. Brooklyn was just 2 of 9 from the floor, 0-for-3 from behind the arc. It just got worse. The deficit swelled to 26-8 quickly on Tatum’s finger roll with 3:25 in the first.
Kristaps Porzingis had 12 of his 15 in the opening quarter, almost single-handedly outscoring the Nets who trailed 30-15 and shot 26.1 percent.
Boston just kept rolling, and Brooklyn kept capitulating.
White’s pull-up 3-pointer made it 66-29 with a half-minute left in the half.
The deficit swelled to 77-32 in the third when Tatum found Sam Hauser for a 3-pointer. And by the fourth the Celtics’ bench was having its way.
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