1. Oh, how sweep it is!
Even the most homerific of Boston Celtics fans wasn’t really thinking they’d sweep the Brooklyn Nets. Yet, here we are.
Yes, every game was close. But that’s sort of the beauty of it. The Celtics learned to close and they did it against one of the better offensive teams in the league.
After the game, Boston reflected on all the talk of ducking Brooklyn. To a man, they all said that’s not who they are. And it’s going to get harder from here, but these Celtics seem like they’re up to task, no matter who the opponent is.
2. Jayson Tatum is so skilled, that sometimes it goes overlooked just how big he is too. That showed up in this game, as Boston did some mismatch hunting throughout the game.
On this play, Tatum and Payton Pritchard work a simple screen action to get Kyrie Irving switched onto Tatum. But Irving is too small and too late to bother this jumper:
In the second half, Tatum doesn’t even use a dribble here to create any space. He just rises and fires over Seth Curry:
A little later, Tatum went to work on Bruce Brown in the post. Look where Tatum starts his move vs where he finishes the finger roll. That’s size and length at work:
3. Jaylen Brown did his fair share of carrying the offense throughout this series too. In Game 4, he got going early, but saved some of his best work for the second half.
Boston did a lot of work attacking the very bad Brooklyn transition defense. No one was better about it than Jaylen Brown. He’s off to the rim here almost as soon as he catches the ball:
With Jayson Tatum on the bench in foul trouble, and the offense scuffling a bit, Brown came up with a huge three-point play over Kyrie Irving:
Late in the game, with Boston clinging to the lead, Brown finished around Bruce Brown and Kevin Durant to just about seal the game:
4. Marcus Smart did his thing as a playmaker early on. He finished with 11 assists, with most of them coming in the first three quarters….
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