BOSTON — Payton Pritchard scored 28 points and the NBA-leading Boston Celtics routed the Brooklyn Nets 136-86 on Wednesday night to become just the third team in league history to post multiple 50-point wins in a season.
The victory also was Joe Mazzulla’s 100th as head coach.
Derrick White finished with 27 points, and Jayson Tatum added 20 points, 9 assists and 7 rebounds for the Celtics, who beat the Nets on back-to-back nights. It was the final game for both teams prior to the All-Star break.
“You can’t operate by feeling, so regardless if we lost tonight and won five out of six or six out of six, you have a tendency to relax, you have a tendency to put it in cruise control,” Mazzulla said. “So winning is just as dangerous as losing if you don’t handle it the right way.”
Boston will enter the break with an NBA-best 43-12 record. The Celtics went 57-25 in Mazzulla’s first year as coach last season.
“I told the guys, it’s something to be proud of, something to be grateful for, and it’s just a testament to the people that you have around you,” Mazzulla said of reaching 100 wins. “In a business where individual success is highly talked about on a nightly basis, the box scores and stuff like that, to have a group of people you can share in your success with is important.”
The Celtics beat the Indiana Pacers by 51 points on Nov. 1. Boston joined the 1992-93 Sacramento Kings and the 1978-79 Milwaukee Bucks as the only teams with multiple wins by at least 50 points in a season.
It was the fifth 50-point win in team history.
Kristaps Porzingis thinks Mazzulla doesn’t always get credit, perhaps because it’s just his second season as a coach. But he thinks he should.
“He’s very underrated as a coach. And different. I think people really don’t see who he is and how he coaches,” Porzingis said. “He deserves a lot of credit.”
Porzingis left the game in the first half with a sprained ankle and didn’t return. But he said he was available in the second half, but was held out with the game in hand.
Trendon Watford had 15 points for the Nets, who have lost five of their past six. They trailed by as many as 56 points in the fourth quarter.
The Celtics played without All-Star Jaylen Brown (bruised right shoulder) and Al Horford (sprained big toe), but they controlled the game throughout, quickly jumping to a double-digit lead and building a 37-point cushion in the second quarter.
It grew to 46 points in the third.
Boston’s starters sat the entire final period.
The Nets did see a player return from injury for the second straight night, this time getting back Cam Johnson following his four-game absence with a strained adductor muscle. He came off the bench, entering for the first time late in the first quarter. He played 18 minutes and finished with four points on 1-of-5 shooting.
Johnson’s presence wasn’t nearly enough to slow down a Boston team that shot more than 64% in the opening period and connected on 22 of 44 3-pointers for the game.
“It’s a great reminder…that we have work to do,” Nets coach Jacque Vaughn said. “We have to be OK doing the work. But I do believe this team can do the work. So use this as a reminder that we got our tails kicked tonight and that after the break it won’t be any easier. But we have to up for the challenge.”
Boston’s 68-32 halftime advantage was its largest since Jan. 13, 2010, when it had a 36-point edge over the New Jersey Nets. Brooklyn’s 34 points Wednesday marked a season low in the first half.
UP NEXT
Nets: At Raptors on Feb. 22.
Celtics: At Bulls on Feb 22.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source: www.espn.com