{"id":560763,"date":"2026-01-25T23:26:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T23:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/560763\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T23:26:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T23:26:14","slug":"how-the-nets-were-doomed-by-details-in-double-overtime-loss-to-celtics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/560763\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Nets were doomed by details in double overtime loss to Celtics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Nets<\/a> spent most of Friday night looking like a team that actually learned something from Wednesday\u2019s mess at Madison Square Garden<\/a>. And then, when the game demanded the smallest details, Brooklyn let it slip anyway.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the brutal part of their 130-126 double-overtime loss to the Boston Celtics<\/a> at Barclays Center. The Nets looked like they\u2019d turned a page in stretches, but you\u2019re not fixing everything overnight, and the same late-game issues that have haunted them all season popped back up when it mattered most. And against a disciplined team like Boston, you have to slam the door shut, and they couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The effort was there. The urgency was there. The finish was not.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a lot for us to learn,\u201d Nic Claxton said. \u201cIt\u2019s a tough loss, obviously, so we just got to watch the film and get better from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first overtime should\u2019ve been the end of it. Noah Clowney seemed to put Brooklyn ahead for good with 41.6 seconds left in the extra session. Rookie Nolan Traore, who finished with a career-high 21 points off the bench, and Ziaire Williams looked ready to ice it at the line, combining for five straight free throws until Traore finally missed with 2.5 seconds left.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all Boston needed. The Celtics didn\u2019t need a two. They needed a 3-pointer. And the Nets, for all the toughness they showed across 50-plus minutes, cracked at the wrong time.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was just wide open,\u201d Claxton said of the corner 3-pointer Hugo Gonzalez hit to force a second overtime. \u201cHe was wide open. He hit the shot.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the kind of moment that makes you double-check the replay just to make sure you saw it right. Claxton didn\u2019t have an explanation when asked about the breakdown after the game. And Head coach Jordi Fern\u00e1ndez didn\u2019t sugarcoat it, either. Brooklyn\u2019s late-game defense has been good enough plenty of nights. Friday just wasn\u2019t one of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all remember the last three, obviously the mistakes that we\u2019ve made,\u201d Fern\u00e1ndez said. \u201cAnd we\u2019ve executed late-game well in many games, especially defensively. And today it was two situations where we could\u2019ve been better.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of those situations was painfully basic. The kind of thing teams drill for exactly this reason. The other was carelessness that led to Gonzalez\u2019s clean look. Claxton boiled it down to the same thing, only with a player\u2019s bluntness.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust knowing when to foul,\u201d Claxton said. \u201cWhen we\u2019re up, we were up five points, knowing when to foul. Can\u2019t give up threes, can\u2019t give up those threes, and fix some coverages.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Nets did a lot right in this game. They fought back. They showed real competitiveness. They made Boston work. But the last few possessions were the story. Not because they didn\u2019t try, but because they didn\u2019t execute. And in this league, especially against Boston, that\u2019s the difference between a win you can build on and a loss that continues to sting days later.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe lost. That\u2019s all I really care about,\u201d Michael Porter Jr. said. \u201cI don\u2019t 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\u2019ve lost too many games this year that come down to the wire like this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Nets spent most of Friday night looking like a team that actually learned something from Wednesday\u2019s mess…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3766],"tags":[7,45,75,3798,46,248,6,671],"class_list":{"0":"post-560763","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-celtics","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-boston","10":"tag-boston-celtics","11":"tag-bostonceltics","12":"tag-celtics","13":"tag-jordi-fernandez","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-nets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}