Oct 23, 2026; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum (0) smiles before their game against the New York Knicks at TD Garden. Mandatory Credit: Winslow Townson-Imagn Images
The winless Brooklyn Nets could receive an unexpected advantage when they travel to face the Boston Celtics on Tuesday night. Despite Boston’s dominant 134-99 victory over the Chicago Bulls on Monday, star forward Jayson Tatum exited the game with 6:53 remaining. It remains unclear whether Tatum—who missed the majority of the 2025-26 season due to a ruptured Achilles tendon—will suit up for the second night of a back-to-back set. Tatum leads the Celtics with an average of 24 points per game through the first three contests of the season.
Head coach Joe Mazzulla offered no definitive answer regarding Tatum’s availability on Monday. “I think it’s twofold,” Mazzulla said. “We trust the sports science team that we have. We trust the competition of those guys. At the same time, I think our locker room has been built on one through 15, 16 or 17 being able to impact winning. So it’s just a combination of all those things. At the end of the day, we have to do what gives us the best chance to win, and at the same time keep those guys healthy and validate the whole locker room by putting guys in situations where they’ve got to win games for us.”
Meanwhile, defensive struggles have plagued the Nets, who are surrendering an average of 123.7 points per game. Opponents are shooting 50.6% from the field and 40.3% from beyond the arc against Brooklyn. “The biggest problem is our communication,” forward Julius Randle said. “We’re just not all on the same page. We’ve got to find a way to communicate better, respect communication amongst each other. If a guy calls something, we’ve got to honor the call. But whatever it is, we’ve just got to communicate on that end because we do a lot of switching. So if we’re going to do a little switching, we’ve got to be communicating, and guys have got to know what the other guy’s doing. We’ve got to be on a string. We haven’t been so far.”
Brooklyn enters the matchup following a 136-109 loss to the Indiana Pacers on Sunday. The Pacers shot 57.6% from the field, converted 21 of 43 three-point attempts, and dominated the paint with 56 points. The Nets held a 51-49 lead after a Moritz Wagner three-pointer with 2:45 left in the first half, but Indiana closed the half on a 16-5 run and poured in 37 points in the third quarter. “The performance we put up after the first quarter was just unacceptable—112 points in three quarters, you’re not winning basketball games,” Nets coach Jordi Fernandez said. “So it didn’t feel good on either end of the floor. It was just disconnection, full-on and everything from the spacing to the plays that we run, to the communication on pick-and-rolls, to multiple efforts, to being disappointed with a mistake and dropping your shoulders. All those things are losing things, and now we did not look like a winning team out there.”
Boston has won two consecutive games since a season-opening 121-113 loss to Detroit. The Celtics have dominated the recent series, winning 11 of the last 12 meetings against the Nets.