(Basketball news) The Boston Celtics took a 2-0 lead in the playoff series as they beat the Brooklyn Nets 114-107. For the Celtics, Jaylen Brown scored 22 points, including 10 in the fourth quarter as Jayson Tatum added 19 points for Boston, which held Durant without a basket in the second half. Al Horford had 16 points, Daniel Theis scored 15 and Payton Pritchard had eight of his 10 in the final period. For the Nets, Durant finished with 27 points but struggled from the field for the second straight game, shooting 4 of 17 as Irving had just 10 points on 4-of-13 shooting a day after being fined $50,000 for directing obscene gestures and profane language. Bruce Brown finished with 23 points and Seth Curry added 16. With this result the Celtics will travel to Brooklyn to face the Nets twice in the Barclays Arena.
''This was old-fashioned. old-school playoff game,'' Tatum said. ''You just have to grind it out. That's what we did… we just just stuck with it. Proud of the guys and how we kept responding all game.''
“They're doing a good job trying to cut off my scoring, limit my shot making,'' Durant said. ''It's on me to figure it out.''
''They took the lead and they never looked back in that fourth quarter,'' Irving said. ''We don't really have time to be disappointed, to hold our heads. This is part of playoff basketball.''
“I think we did that,'' Udoka said. ''We want to make him work defensively and offensively, have bodies on him the whole time and try to wear him down.''
''I think our intensity dropped a little bit in the second half. We also didn't convert,'' Nets coach Steve Nash said. ''We had opportunities, we didn't convert.''
The Chicago Bulls made a staggering comeback against the third seed Milwaukee Bucks as they beat them 114-110. For the Bulls, DeRozan scored a career playoff-high 41 points as Nikola Vucevic added 24 points and 13 rebounds, while Zach LaVine had 20 points as the sixth-seeded Bulls beat the third-seeded Bucks for just the second time in their last 19 meetings. For the Bucks, Giannis Antetokounmpo led the scoring with 33 points, 18 rebounds and nine assists. Antetokounmpo increased his career postseason point total to 1,715 to overtake Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1,692) for the most in Bucks history as Brook Lopez had 25 points for the Bucks. Middleton scored 18 and Holiday 15. With this result the Bucks travel to Chicago for two games as the series is finally poised at 1-1.
''No matter what you did in the regular season, this is a brand new start and new mindset,'' DeRozan said. ''You could see it in all the guys. It doesn't matter if we've lost 20 times to those guys. This is an opportunity for us to compete. We've got to take advantage of it.''
''He's always been positive and he knows the type of team that we are and how resilient we are,'' Bucks guard Jrue Holiday said. ''We just want him to get back as quickly as possible and be healthy so he can come out here and help us win games.''
''We expected those guys to make a run,'' Vucevic said. ''They're a championship team for a reason. They've been there before, so we expected them to make a run.''
''I do think that playing some of these higher-level teams at the end of the year has maybe kind of hardened us, helped us grow,'' Bulls coach Billy Donovan said. ''It's helped us get better. It's helped us be able to have that kind of mentality that we've got to move on to the next play. I think at times this year when we played against good teams, when it started to go a little bit the other direction, we didn't have enough in us to get it back going in our direction.''
The Philadelphia 76ers have one step in the second round of the playoffs after their overtime 104-101 victory over the Toronto Raptors. For the Sixers, Embiid made a 3-pointer with 0.8 seconds left in overtime to give the 76ers their third straight victory as he scored 33 points and 13 rebounds. James Harden had 19 points and 10 assists before fouling out in the closing seconds of regulation as Tyrese Maxey scored 19 points and Tobias Harris had 11 points and 12 rebounds. For the Raptors, Anunoby scored 26 points, Gary Trent Jr. had a playoff-high 24, and Precious Achiuwa had 20 as Pascal Siakam and VanVleet each had 12 points. VanVleet shot 3 for 13, going 2 for 10 from 3-point range. Now the Sixers have a chance to wrap the series on Saturday in Toronto after taking a 3-0 lead in the series.
“Great play call,'' Embiid said. ''Tobias set an amazing screen, Danny threw a great pass. All I had to do was finish, and I'm glad I did.
''For him, that's a high-percentage shot, especially on that wing,'' Harris said of Embiid's decisive basket. ''We got the ball to our best player, somebody who makes plays, makes shots.''
''We've been watching his skill set all year long and how great he's been,'' Harden said. ''Tonight was no different. He did all the right things, and when it was time for him to finish the game off, he did that.''
''There's no room to look around and feel sorry for ourselves,'' VanVleet said. ''We did a lot of good things tonight, we played a lot of minutes of great basketball and we're going to have to do it again.''
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