(Basketball news) The Boston Celtics breezed past the Brooklyn Nets as they convincingly won 139-96. For the Celtics, Jayson Tatum scored 31 points and had nine rebounds as Jaylen Brown added 26 points as both of Boston’s stars knocked down seven 3-pointers in the game. While Robert Williams finished with 16 points and nine rebounds in his return from a sprained ankle as Derrick White added 14 points and 10 rebounds. For the Nets, Kyrie Irving scored 20 points and Cam Thomas added 19 points. The Nets dropped to 4-7 since Kevin Durant sprained his right knee on Jan. 8. With this result the Celtics maintained their best record in the league and are back to winning ways after 3 successive defeats on the road as they improved their record to 37-15.
”You can tell we were ready to go from the jump,” Tatum said.
”They’re hungry,” Williams said of Tatum and Brown. ”They’re still (upset) about last year.”
”It’s clear as day that they want to win the championship, and they’re not wasting any time in the regular season,” Irving said. ”Tonight I felt like we were just one of those teams in the way, and you know, we just can’t be one of those teams in the way. We’ve got to be one of those teams that stands up to them.”
”This was a night where they hit first, they hit hard and it hurt,” Nets coach Jacque Vaughn said.
The Golden State Warriors lost to the Minnesota Timberwolves 119-114. For the Wolves, D’Angelo Russell scored 14 of his 29 points in the fourth quarter while Anthony Edwards scored 27 points. For the Warriors, Stephen Curry had 29 points and 10 rebounds for Golden State. Jordan Poole added 18 points, Klay Thompson had 14, and Draymond Green had 10 points and 12 rebounds as they had won three in a row before this match. The Timberwolves on the other hand improved their record 28-26 and moved up to 6th in the Western Conference standings.
”We needed it,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said about Edwards. ”It was good to see him get to the paint.”
”We had control of the game, and I thought we just kind of gift wrapped it,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. ”They took advantage of our mistakes and our lack of execution. … Everything we had done to that point to have control of the game, we stopped doing, so we got what we deserved.”
”I just think as a group, we did it collectively,” Russell said. ”It was just a balanced game from our group. Everybody pitched in.’
”That’s a team that’s not going to back down,” Reid said about the Warriors. ”They’re accustomed to winning, so when we bring it to them early, it just shows that we’re not here to back down. We’re really here to fight.”
Also read: NBA: Lakers win against the Knicks while the Nuggets get the better off Pelicans
