Brooklyn Nets Beat Boston Celtics in Breakthrough Win Six games into the season, it was clear that Nets Coach Avery Johnson was already looking for spots where a win meant more than just a win. He calls them "breakthrough moments" - those seminal games the team can use as a springboard, toward where it thinks it can be, toward where the Boston Celtics currently are. So Thursday night's matchup was more than just an exercise to show off the Nets" plush new arena in front of a national television audience. It was that rare early chance for a statement. "Sure, we've had some wins," Johnson said before the game. We need breakthroughs. The Nets certainly made something clear with their 102-97 win over Boston at a sold-out Barclays Center on Thursday night. Chants of "Brooklyn!" reverberated. The season may be in its infancy, but the Nets finally laid claim to their home turf after those skeletal final seasons in New Jersey. "It really hasn't been like that for a long time here," center Brook Lopez said. The Nets withstood a second-half Celtic rally to win their fourth in a row, the team's longest winning streak since March 2011. Two late baskets by their marquee off-season acquisition, Joe Johnson, provided a fitting resolution in a tough early-season test. "We showed a lot of resiliency in the fourth quarter," Johnson said. We were able to get some stops down the stretch. The Nets had lost 18 of their previous 20 games against Boston, not including a 115-85 drubbing in the preseason that served as a sobering reminder to anyone who forgot that the conference would not be won by hype alone. The Nets" other marquee game so far, against the defending-champion Miami Heat, did not go so well either, and Brooklyn lost by 30 on the road. Afterward, Avery Johnson reminded his team that it had a long way to go to catch the Heat, and he issued a similar tone of caution before Thursday's game when asked if the Celtics are the team the Nets are most eager to emulate. "When you've been a non-playoff team, it's all of the other teams also that are ahead of us," Johnson said. It's a lot of teams. Johnson said he was eager to measure the team's improvement against their preseason matchup against Boston, and the Nets" focus and intensity were apparent from the start. Brooklyn began the game scorching offensively, hitting seven of its first nine shots from the field to jump out to an 18-8 lead. The Nets also dominated Boston on the glass, grabbing 15 offensive rebounds in the first half alone. The hot shooting cooled (the Nets finished the half 15 for their next 39 from the field), but Brooklyn still held a 9-point lead at halftime. Boston was playing without its star point guard, Rajon Rondo, who has an ankle injury. In the third quarter, the Celtics" two aging stars, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, took turns drilling long-range jumpers and tough layups. Pierce scored 11 points in the third quarter, and the defense tightened. With 3 minutes 44 seconds left in the third quarter, the Celtics took their first lead in the game on a vintage Pierce pull-up. That lead stretched to five, 79-74, going into the fourth quarter, when the Nets began on an 11-6 run. Jerry Stackhouse hit a 3-pointer from the corner with six minutes left to tie the score at 85-85. It was tied again, 87-87, with under four minutes to play, when Joe Johnson hit a fallaway floater from the baseline to give the Nets the lead again. Seconds later, he added another pull-up jumper to extend the lead to 4. Brandon Bass cut it to 1 with a 3-pointer with 50 seconds left, but the Nets held on. Johnson scored 18 points, and Brook Lopez added a key putback with 1:45 remaining to give him a game-high 24. After its season-opening game against the Knicks was postponed because of Hurricane Sandy, Thursday's game was the first opportunity for Brooklyn to show off its new area to a national television audience. Barclays Center was sold out and pulsating. Avery Johnson soaked in the scene, reminded that for years games against the Celtics in New Jersey would be "75-80 percent" filled with Boston fans. Not so on Thursday. The energized crowd, cloaked in black, reveled in a significant win - perhaps even a breakthrough. "I'm excited for the fans more than anything," Joe Johnson said. Hopefully, we can keep winning games like this so they can keep chanting. Forward Gerald Wallace missed his sixth straight game Thursday with a sprained left ankle. ... The reserve guard MarShon Brooks, who missed three games, also with a sprained left ankle, returned Thursday and scored 2 points in six minutes.