After suffering one of the most humiliating blows in team history, Jordi Fernández challenged his Nets to show more fight.
Brooklyn fought its way through not one but two overtimes, falling just short against the Celtics 130-126 on Friday night before a sold-out crowd of 17,727 at Barclays Center.
The Nets (12-31) have dropped a dozen of their last 14, the worst of which was a 120-66 loss Wednesday to the Knicks. It was the second-largest margin of defeat in franchise history, and their lowest scoring output since a 90-65 loss to Miami on March 12, 2005. To a man, they had recognized the need to redeem themselves.
“Yes, it’s about how you react. You obviously don’t like to be embarrassed. It was a heavy feeling,” Fernández said. “But we were there together and the best thing you can do is [Thursday] watch a movie, talk to each other, do some work this morning, do it again and go out and respond as a group. … Again, how you respond is how you should be judged.”
The Nets responded. But they didn’t win.
Michael Porter Jr. led the Nets with 30 points and eight rebounds to bounce back from a down night at the Garden, while rookie Nolan Traore – playing in place of Egor Dëmin of late – added a career-high 21 points, although he will rue a missed free throw in the first overtime that allowed the Celtics to force the second. That’s where the Nets lost.
Down by one point in the second overtime, Sam Hauser’s 3-pointer left the Nets in a 128-124 hole with 1:51 left. Porter cut the deficit in half, but Peyton Pritchard broke free on a feed from Jaylen Brown with 44.2 seconds left.
Pritchard (32 points) and Brown (27) led Boston.
Porter — who was held to just a dozen points on 4-for-14 shooting at the Garden — shouldered much of the blame for that loss with the Knicks, admitting his energy level hadn’t been where it should have been. On Friday he came out excited.
There was a logo 3-pointer that put Brooklyn up 21-19 with 4:18 left in the first quarter. And 46 seconds later, an empathetic driving dunk.
“[Wednesday] At night I texted the guys and told them, ‘Yo, that’s my fault.’ I have to come in with that energy,” Porter said. “If we come in with the right energy, we know we can compete with anyone. It doesn’t matter who, what formations there are and who we play with. We know we have pieces that can compete with any team. We have shown that.
“So I told them [Wednesday was] my fault, and let’s get back to a competitive group. We’ve been to Boston, beat Boston; been to Minnesota, beat Minnesota and participated in many games that got away from us. So I told them, let’s get back to it and realize that when we’re cooped up and taking care of business, we’re competing with everyone.
Brooklyn led for much of the evening.
Trailing 36-35, the Nets went on an 18-6 run to grab the lead. Porter’s three-pointer off a feed from Nic Claxton (18 points, nine rebounds) put them ahead 53-42.
Much of the third quarter saw Brooklyn trying to keep Boston at bay.
A Porter 3 gave them a 91-90 lead with 6:49 left in regulation, but it’s a lead they couldn’t hold on to. Brooklyn coughed up an 11-0 run, capped by Pritchard’s 3-pointer on a Brown feed that put the Nets in a 10-point hole with three minutes left.
But Brooklyn climbed out to force overtime on a Claxton dunk following a Porter miss.
In the first extra stanza, the Nets fell behind 112-108 on a Hugo Gonzalez bucket.
The Nets went on a 9-0 run to take a 117-112 lead on a Ziaire Williams free throw with 7.9 seconds left, but couldn’t hold on. A Gonzalez corner 3-pointer with :00.4 on the clock clinched the tie and forced a second overtime.
There they eventually ran out of gas.
The Nets remained fifth in the lottery race, 1 ½ games behind fourth-place Sacramento and moved two ahead of sixth-place Utah.
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