Top Takeaways from Kevin Durant, Nets vs. Jayson Tatum, Celtics
A day after LeBron James captured the national spotlight with a 56-point outburst, it was Jayson Tatum's turn to send social media into a frenzy.
Tatum scored 54 points and won the head-to-head battle with Kevin Durant, leading the Boston Celtics to a 126-120 win over the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday.
Durant, playing in his second game back since returning from a knee injury, scored 37 but did not get much help from his teammates. Kyrie Irving was limited to 19 points on 18 shots as he was jeered by a Boston crowd that's still not over the sour way he left the franchise in 2019.
Tatum, meanwhile, got 21 points from Jaylen Brown as all five Celtics starters were in double figures.
The loss was a microcosm of the polar opposite directions these teams are headed. Boston has won three straight to continue its red-hot run of late, while the Nets are losers of four straight and six of their last seven.
Celtics Go from Also-Ran to Title Contender
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Let's hop back a couple of months.
We're all stretching our legs and making our morning coffee to stave off the New Year's hangover. The Boston Celtics are below .500. They've been perhaps the NBA's most uninspired team. Things were, you know, fine.
Ime Udoka was fine in his first season as a head coach. Brad Stevens had made some fine moves in the front office. The Jaylen Brown-Jayson Tatum pairing was going fine.
Every part of the franchise felt stuck in neutral. Nothing was good but nothing was bad, and Celtics fans were restless. Even former franchise legends were starting to wonder if a major shake-up was needed.
"Brown and Tatum don't have the ability to make their teammates better. ... When Brown and Tatum are doing their thing, everybody's just standing around," Robert Parish said Jan. 20 on SiriusXM Radio.
Media members were ready to split the All-Star duo, with Ben Simmons' name coming up more than once as a potential target.
Crazy how a little winning can change a narrative.
Boston is 16-3 over its last 19 games, moving up to fifth place in the Eastern Conference and looking like an increasing threat to make a deep run into the playoffs. FiveThirtyEight currently has the Celtics as the championship favorite and gives them a 29 percent chance of making the NBA Finals.
Tatum's 54-point outburst was his third straight game of 30 points or more; he just outdueled MVP candidate Ja Morant on Thursday.
But defense is what's separated the Celtics during this run. Boston is now second in the NBA in defensive efficiency for the season and has been a juggernaut over this 19-game stretch, allowing 101.4 points per 100 possessions. That's more than five points better than any other team and four points better than the Warriors' season-long number.
Tatum and Brown have become one of the NBA's best wing-defending duos, Marcus Smart and Derrick White are menaces for opposing guards, and Robert Williams III and Al Horford can defend nearly any big-man matchup in the league.
Suffice it to say the push for a breakup has gotten awfully quiet of late.
KD's Brooklyn Bet Blowing Up in His Face
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The Warriors could have been the great dynasty of the modern era. They blitzed their way to a pair of championships in Durant's first two seasons, barely breaking a sweat along the way as they went 8-1 against LeBron James' Cavaliers in the Finals. The three-peat never came because of a combination of injuries and infighting, but most recognize there is no Toronto Raptors championship in 2019 without catastrophic injuries to Durant and Klay Thompson.
The following season would have been lost no matter what—Thompson, Durant and Stephen Curry played a combined six games in 2019-20—but Golden State could have returned to title contention in 2020-21 even with Thompson out. It would have been a blip in the radar in a decade of dominance.
But Durant wasn't happy.
The Bay Area titles didn't fill the void he'd hoped, and the Warriors never felt his. He was a guest in Curry's house. So long as he stayed, the bath towels were never going to be monogrammed with his initials. He was constantly clowned on social media—to the point he famously hopped on his own burner accounts to defend himself. The once-in-a-lifetime bond that seemed so possible in that Hamptons house in 2016 fizzled out, with teammates questioning his commitment as Durant's eyes wandered.
To New York.
But never the Knicks.
The Nets were always the choice for now-obvious reasons. Durant would face no ghosts of Madison Square Garden past in Brooklyn. There would be no meddling James Dolan threatening to undo the franchise turnaround with one stroke of his ego.
The Nets were a blank slate. Their fanbase consisted of casuals who went when Knicks tickets were too expensive and scorned New Jerseyans who were tossed aside when the team moved to Brooklyn. Their billionaire owner, Joe Tsai, had deep pockets, a desire to win and, most importantly, a willingness to allow basketball people to make basketball decisions.
Durant, a huge investor in Silicon Valley startups, could essentially build a monolith from the ground up. He could reach the franchise icon status he left behind in Oklahoma City while playing in the big market he wanted in the Bay.
More importantly, he could do it while being happy. Next to his friends, Kyrie Irving and (at the time) DeAndre Jordan. In his way. With his vision. And his coach.
Three years in...what a disaster.
Sunday's loss dropped the Nets to 32-33. They would need two straight wins in play-in games if the season ended today to even capture the No. 8 seed. The team has spent its entire 2021-22 campaign making more headlines off the court than on, with Irving's continued refusal to undergo COVID-19 vaccination undermining the entire effort.
James Harden grew tired of shouldering the load with an injured Durant out of the lineup and Irving playing the role of absentee superstar. Harden pouted his way to Philly at the deadline to create a championship contender with the Sixers. In his place came Ben Simmons, he of equally pouty disposition and now a back injury that has put him on the shelf indefinitely before he even makes his team debut.
Durant finally returned from a six-week absence last Thursday as spectacular as ever. What he could was a team in shambles. Back-to-back 30-point efforts weren't enough to right the ship, with the Nets losing to a depleted Heat team Thursday before getting 50-pieced by Tatum two days later.
The on-court pairing of Durant and Irving has not proved to be the instant on-court juggernaut both hoped. For all of his spectacular skill, winning hasn't followed Irving wherever he's gone in the NBA. It took LeBron James' arrival in Cleveland to turn things around, and the young kids in Boston fared better in the playoffs without Irving than with him. The Nets are 5-11 in Irving's 16 games played this season.
Something is missing.
Maybe it's Simmons. Maybe the move to Brooklyn and the comfort of being the third guy will be exactly what he needs to unlock his vast potential. But we have no idea what type of player Simmons will be when he returns to the floor. The last time we saw him was Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals—a mentally beaten "deer in the headlights" shell of himself.
With no timetable for Simmons' return and Irving still ineligible to play home games, Durant is on an island. These Nets are his. They're a result of his decisions, his vision, his desire to carve his own path.
For better or worse.
