Tatum's overtime buzzer-beater lifts Celtics past winless Nets, 125-124

Jayson Tatum made a 17-foot jumper at the overtime buzzer to give the Boston Celtics a 125-124 win over the Brooklyn Nets on Tuesday night at TD Garden, a result that pushed Boston to 3-1 to open the season and left Brooklyn winless through four games. Tatum finished with a season-high 40 points, and the official NBA box score shows he needed extra time to get there: Brooklyn rookie Mikel Brown Jr. had forced overtime seconds earlier with a tying 3-pointer with two-tenths of a second left in regulation.

The finish capped a game that swung repeatedly in the final minutes. Boston looked to have it in hand when Derrick White finished a lob from Tatum for a go-ahead dunk with 33.7 seconds left in regulation, then made the ensuing free throw to put the Celtics up 114-111. Brooklyn's Mitchell Robinson missed two free throws with three seconds remaining, but the rebound found its way to Brown, who buried the game-tying three just before the horn. In overtime, Brown missed a potential go-ahead layup with 2.3 seconds on the clock, setting up Tatum's winner moments later, according to the Associated Press account carried by CBS Sports.

The numbers

Tatum shot 10 of 20 from the field and 18 of 22 from the free-throw line, the volume at the line a product of a game that stayed physical into its final minutes. Paul George, in his first season in Boston after a July trade that sent Jaylen Brown to Philadelphia, added 20 points, and White finished with 16. For Brooklyn, Michael Porter Jr. had 27 points and 12 rebounds, Julius Randle scored 24, and Brown — the No. 6 pick in this year's draft, as his NBA.com draft profile notes — had 17 points on a night his coaches will point to as evidence he belongs. Neither team led by more than eight points for most of the night; Brooklyn's largest cushion came on a Randle basket that put the Nets up 109-104 with just under three minutes left in regulation, before Boston closed the game on a run to force the extra period in the first place.

The win was Boston's third in a row after an opening-night loss that had nothing to do with Tuesday's heroics. The Celtics blew a 22-point lead at Detroit on Oct. 20, falling 121-113 as the Pistons closed the fourth quarter on a 23-0 run, according to a report from Detroit that also noted Tatum shot just 6 of 23 from the field that night. The contrast between that performance and Tuesday's 40-point, buzzer-beating turn has become part of the early-season story Boston is telling about itself.

A season removed from surgery

The larger context is Tatum's health. He ruptured his right Achilles tendon on May 12, 2025, during Boston's Game 4 loss to the New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference semifinals, an injury that required season-ending surgery, as multiple outlets reported at the time. He missed the bulk of the 2025-26 season recovering before returning to game action in March. Four games into his first full season back, his averages — and Tuesday's late-game burst in particular — are the clearest sign yet that the Achilles is no longer a limiting factor. Boston also remade its roster around him over the summer, trading longtime wing Jaylen Brown to Philadelphia for George, a move that drew skepticism from some analysts at the time but has so far produced two 20-point games from George in Boston's first four contests.

Brooklyn's longer rebuild

For Brooklyn, the loss extends a winless start that fits the trajectory the franchise signaled it was on when it finished 20-62 last season under coach Jordi Fernandez, who was hired in 2024 as, among other things, the first Spanish-born head coach in NBA history and has since signed a contract extension to continue the rebuild. Tuesday's game offered a clear look at its best current asset: Brown, the Louisville guard taken sixth overall in June, scored 17 points and delivered the shot that forced overtime against a Celtics team that had won its previous three games, even though the Nets came up just short in the extra period. Porter Jr.'s 27 points and Randle's 24 suggest the current roster can score; the 0-4 record suggests it has not yet learned to close games.

Brown himself is the more interesting long-term thread. The Louisville guard missed 14 games as a college freshman with a back injury, and his NBA.com scouting profile compares his offensive polish favorably to that of Desmond Bane and CJ McCollum at the same stage of their careers, crediting him with a quick pull-up jumper and strong feel in pick-and-roll actions. A tying 3-pointer with the game on the line, against a Celtics team off to a strong start, is about as public an audition as a rookie gets. That it ended in a loss will matter far less to Brooklyn's long view than the fact that he made the shot at all.

What's next

Both teams are back in action Friday. Brooklyn hosts Detroit — the same team that erased Boston's 22-point lead in the opener — still searching for its first win of the season. Boston hosts Chicago, looking to extend its winning streak to four and add to a start that, whatever happened in Detroit three games ago, now looks considerably healthier for its best player.