BOSTON — On a night all about Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, it was fitting one of them made the play that sealed the game.
Garnett picked off a pass from former teammate and close friend Rajon Rondo at the top of the key, took off toward the other basket and laid the ball in with 17.3 seconds left to give the Nets a five-point lead and seal an eventual 85-79 triumph Sunday night in front of a sellout crowd of 18,624 at TD Garden.
“I knew they were trying to run a pick-and-roll and Rondo was going to try for a 3,” Garnett said. “I knew they needed a 3 at that point, and I just played the passing lane.
“It took me two days to get the layup,” he added with a smile. “I thought I was going to get caught. But I got it, put the ball in front of me, and I got the layup.”
Garnett’s heroics capped what was an otherwise underwhelming game, given the emotions that surrounded the return of the two former Celtics legends to Boston for the first time since the Nets (20-22) acquired them in a blockbuster trade on draft night last June.
The first half almost felt like a preseason game, with both teams struggling to do anything offensively — going a combined 27 for 83 (32.5 percent) from the floor — and collectively looking as if they were all caught up in the celebration of the time Garnett and Pierce spent here, including a pair of emotional tribute videos and long standing ovations from the hometown crowd.
“It was a lot,” said Deron Williams, who finished with seven points, seven rebounds and seven assists in 34 minutes in his fourth straight game off the bench. “I know it was definitely emotional for those guys … maybe just the energy in the building? I don’t know why we couldn’t get it going.
“I felt this would be a game where we would get it going. It just didn’t happen that way.”
Instead, it took until the third quarter for the Nets to finally get some separation from the Celtics (15-31), who have now lost 17 of their last 20 games. Brooklyn opened the third quarter by going on a 10-2 run that began with Pierce scoring his first points with a pair of free throws, then making a fadeaway jumper after a pair of Alan Anderson 3-pointers to give the Nets a 45-36 lead.
The Nets held a comfortable advantage nearly all the way until the game’s final minute, before Williams harried Rondo into making a poor pass and Garnett did the rest.
“I just made the wrong play,” Rondo said.
Sunday night’s win saw the Nets improve to 10-1 in January — matching their start to 2013 under P.J. Carlesimo — and gave them their fifth straight victory, a remarkable turnaround from where the team was at the end of December, when it fell to 10-21 after being blown out by the Spurs on New Year’s Eve.
“I have no idea,” Joe Johnson said of how the Nets have turned things around. “Honestly, I don’t.”
Regardless of how they’ve done it, the Nets now head into Monday night’s showdown with the Atlantic Division-leading Raptors in Brooklyn with a chance to move within a half-game of Toronto for first place, and an opportunity to exact a measure of revenge after the Raptors dealt them their lone 2014 loss on Jan. 11 in Toronto.
“It’s payback time,” said Andray Blatche, who led the Nets with 17 points. “They beat us in Toronto, and we have to come back and take care of business [Monday].
“We’re not looking backwards. We’re only trying to look forward.”