Kyrie Irving vents about Celtics after Nets suffer embarrassing beatdown in Boston

BOSTON — The Celtics built the largest first quarter lead in franchise history on Wednesday night at the expense of Kyrie Irving and the undermanned Nets on their way to a 139-96 victory.

The former Celtic point guard has raved about his ex-teammates in recent years as Boston has dominated the head-to-head matchups. After the team’s 10th consecutive loss at TD Garden, Irving did not hold back when speaking about the gap he sees between the two franchises at this point.

“When you’re going against a very motivated team such as the Boston Celtics, they have a chip on their shoulder,” Irving said. “It’s clear as day that they want to win a championship and not waste any time in the regular season. So tonight I felt like we were just one of those teams in the way and we just can be one of those teams in the way. We got to be one of those teams that stands up to them and at least shows them that we’re going to be competition for them moving forward, which I believe we are.”

Irving scored a team-high 20 points over 31 minutes in the 139-96 defeat as the Nets played without Ben Simmons, Kevin Durant and TJ Warren due to injuries. The loss dropped Brooklyn 5.5 games behind the Celtics for the top seed in the East just weeks after they jumped up to the No. 2 spot.

The Nets are just 4-7 since losing Kevin Durant to injury including two losses to Boston over that stretch. Jacque Vaughn also took responsibility for his team’s struggles in the historic beatdown.

“I think if you look at how we were moving, the energy and effort that we needed to beat this team tonight we were lacking that from the beginning of the game,” Vaughn said.

The Celtics will go for their third straight win at TD Garden on Friday night against the Suns trying to carry over the momentum.

“It was good to have,” Mazzulla said of the win.” Every game you have, you have to learn from, regardless of what happens. So I think the guys feel good. We were able to rest. Guys were able to play lesser minutes than normal, so you’re able to relax a little bit. But you don’t want to relax too much. So you got to be grateful for the result that you have but you got to understand that you got to keep moving forward. So the more important thing is I like how our guys played throughout the entire game.”

©2023 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit masslive.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.