BOSTON — From shirts and taunts of “Where’s Kyrie?” to incessant chants of “Kyrie sucks” — and worse — the Celtics fans let the Nets know what they think of the former Boston point guard.
Then the Celtics rode his replacement to a 121-110 victory over shorthanded Brooklyn before a riled-up sellout crowd of 19,156 at TD Garden.
It snapped the Nets’ four-game winning streak and dropped them to 5-2 since Irving got hurt.
“It’s very similar [to when] I’ve been here in the playoffs. It’s a great basketball environment,” coach Kenny Atkinson said.
“I give Celtic fans a big up about it: They’re passionate fans. They we yelling it the whole game. … They were just going crazy,” said Jarrett Allen, who saw 17 points and 14 boards to go waste. “[It was] better than I thought. It could’ve been the while game booing us every time we touched the ball. If Kyrie was here, it probably would’ve been 10 times worse. But they we giving it to us.”
Irving, who bolted Boston from Brooklyn this offseason, missed his seventh straight game with a shoulder impingement. But that didn’t stop fans from plastered up posters in the area calling him a coward.
“It happens all the time and Tonight just shows how Sports/Entertainment will always be ignorant and obtrusive. It’s one big SHOW that means very little in the real world,” Irving said in a lengthy Instagram post.
Boston (13-4) got a dominant performance from his replacement. Kemba Walker — back from his neck injury — returned to the court, and did it with aplomb.
Walker poured in a game-high 39 points, hitting 6 of 10 from deep. And in a game the Nets (9-9) were viewing as a measuring stick — along with Friday’s rematch in Brooklyn — they came up a little short.
Garrett Temple scored a team-high 22 points, and Joe Harris added 21 and Spencer Dinwiddie 16 with 11 assists. But the Nets gave up a 9-0 run near the end of the third quarter that cost them.
Playing without Irving, Caris LeVert, they couldn’t overcome the loss of DeAndre Jordan. Despite another solid game from Allen, he got little help on the glass as they got outrebounded 55-38.
“We competed, it was just really the rebounding. It’s rare that in a game you say it’s one thing that really changes the game, [but] I think it was rebounding,” Atkinson said. “You can’t give a team that many extra shots and that many extra possessions.”
The Nets got punished 19-11 on the offensive glass, and 25-10 in second-chance points.
And every time Allen sat, Enes Kanter roughed up spindly rookie Nic Claxton the same way he used to beat up Allen. Brooklyn coughed up nine offensive boards and 14 second-chance points in the decisive third quarter alone.
“I think they got 11 offensive rebounds in the third. That’s something that’s tough to come back from,” Temple said. “Enes, with DJ being out, we knew that Enes-Nic matchup was going to be something we had to keep an eye on. And he’s just a beast. … We didn’t do a good enough job helping Nic.”
Much of the first half was back-and-forth. The Nets reeled off an 8-0 run to knot the game at 37-all.
The Nets continued to extend the lead behind Temple. And Harris’ 3-pointer off an Allen kick-out capped an 11-2 run to give Brooklyn a 60-51 lead with two minutes left in the first half. But they couldn’t hold it in the second.
With Brooklyn leading 75-70, they saw the Celtics take the lead with a 10-3 run. And after Dinwiddie gave the Nets an 81-80 edge, he checked out with 3:37 left in the third. They served up a 24-11 run with him on the bench and never challenged again.
By the time Dinwiddie came back, the Nets trailed 104-92 with 7:51 left. They tried to rally, with a Temple 3-pointer getting them within 104-101, but they got no closer.
The Celtics closed it out as their fans taunted Irving from afar.
“[Irving is] not here,” Dinwiddie said. “So whatever they had to say — well, he heard it through the TV I’m sure — but he didn’t hear it.”
But apparently he did.
