The Boston Celtics deserve a ton of praise for beating the Brooklyn Nets in the first two games of the teams’ first-round NBA playoff series.
But, let’s talk about the Nets.
Brooklyn simply didn’t rise to the occasion in Games 1 and 2 at TD Garden, and much of the blame can be placed on Kevin Durant, whom Boston completely locked down on the defensive end.
Stephen A. Smith, among others, absolutely shredded Durant on Thursday, one day after the Nets superstar shot 4-for-17 from the field, including 0-for-10 in the second half, as Boston overcame a 17-point deficit to defeat Brooklyn 114-107.
“You can’t look at him as the best player in the world, which is what I’ve been saying for quite a while,” Smith said on ESPN’s “First Take.” “This is a tragic performance by him in these first two games. And we can talk about Boston’s defense, and they deserve a boatload of credit. Boston’s defense is sensational, I know that. And I’m not going to go where Kendrick Perkins went the other day where he was talking about KD getting ‘punked.’ I’m not going there, because it’s impossible for me to feel that way about him. But my God, I have never seen Kevin Durant look this bad.
“It’s not about the performance. It’s not about the fact that he’s 4-for-17 overall. To some degree, it’s about the fact that he’s 0-for-10 in the second half. To another degree, it’s about the fact that he looked shook. He looked rattled. And I never thought that I would see something like that happen to Kevin Durant on the offensive side of the ball. Certainly some nights are better than others. But we’ve never looked at Kevin Durant and said, ‘My God, he looks awful. He looks like he can’t get anything going.’ There’s nothing that’s working. They’re all up in him.
“One minute, he’s double teamed. Another minute, they’re defending him straight up and he’s blocking his shot. The list goes on. You’re crossing over and bouncing the ball off of your own foot and it’s going out of bounds. He looked completely rattled. He looked completely shook. It was an abysmal, embarrassing performance by Kevin Durant, and the Brooklyn Nets are on the verge of getting swept. I can’t believe that those words are coming out of my mouth.”
Is Smith overreacting? Maybe.
While Durant was terrible, by his standards, in Games 1 and 2, the 12-time All-Star is fully capable of flipping the script in this series, which now shifts to Brooklyn for Games 3 and 4. It still would be somewhat surprising to see the Celtics sweep the Nets, especially with how tightly contested the first two games have been despite Durant’s struggles.
But the point remains: Durant needs to play better for Brooklyn. And so does his tag-team partner, Kyrie Irving, who also looked lost Wednesday night in Boston’s comeback win.
Otherwise, it’ll be an early exit for the Nets, a team with NBA Finals aspirations. At that point, Smith probably would have a field day ripping Durant.
