The Brooklyn Nets showed heart, hustle, and a whole lot of resolve Friday night at Barclays Center. For most of the game, they looked like a team that took Wednesday’s collapse at Madison Square Garden personally.
But when it came down to the final, unforgiving moments, the same demons that have haunted this team all season came roaring back. And against a team as polished and poised as the Boston Celtics, those late-game lapses proved costly.
Brooklyn dropped a 130-126 double-overtime heartbreaker to Boston in a game that had all the makings of a statement win-until it didn’t. The Nets played with urgency, they played with edge.
But when the game demanded precision, they blinked. And in the NBA, especially against elite teams like the Celtics, the margin for error is razor-thin.
“It’s a lot for us to learn,” said Nic Claxton after the game. “It’s a tough loss, obviously, so we just got to watch the film and get better from it.”
Claxton’s frustration was understandable. The Nets had their chances to close this one out.
They were up five in the first overtime. Noah Clowney hit a big shot with 41.6 seconds left that felt like the dagger.
Rookie Nolan Traore, who turned in a career-best 21 points off the bench, and Ziaire Williams combined for five clutch free throws to seemingly seal it. But Traore missed his final attempt with 2.5 seconds left-and that sliver of daylight was all Boston needed.
The Celtics didn’t need a two. They needed a three. And Brooklyn gave it to them.
“He was just wide open,” Claxton said of Hugo Gonzalez’s corner triple that forced double overtime. “He was wide open. He hit the shot.”
It was one of those moments that makes you want to rewind the tape and ask, “How did that happen?” The Nets had defended well for most of the night, but in the biggest moment, they lost focus. Head coach Jordi Fernández didn’t dance around it, either.
“We all remember the last three, obviously the mistakes that we’ve made,” Fernández said. “And we’ve executed late-game well in many games, especially defensively. And today it was two situations where we could’ve been better.”
One of those breakdowns was a basic defensive lapse-the kind you drill every day in practice. The other?
A mental miscue that left Gonzalez wide open in the corner. Claxton summed it up with the kind of blunt honesty you want from a leader.
“Just knowing when to foul,” he said. “When we’re up, we were up five points, knowing when to foul. Can’t give up threes, can’t give up those threes, and fix some coverages.”
That’s the thing with this Nets team. The fight is there.
The talent is there in flashes. They battled back.
They pushed Boston. They made the Celtics earn every inch.
But when the game boiled down to execution, Brooklyn came up short-again.
And that’s what stings most.
“We lost. That’s all I really care about,” said Michael Porter Jr.
“I don’t care about no fight, personally. Obviously, it was a better performance collectively than last game, but we still lost.
So, it was a game we should have won. We’ve lost too many games this year that come down to the wire like this.”
Porter’s words cut to the core. The Nets didn’t just lose a game-they let a winnable one slip through their fingers.
And when you’re trying to build something, those are the losses that linger. The kind that keep you up at night.
Because they don’t come from a lack of effort-they come from a lack of execution.
And in this league, that’s the difference between a moral victory and a real one.