BOSTON — It was a familiar situation for the Celtics: trailing in the fourth quarter against a Nets team that’s been one of the NBA’s worst this season.

Boston was able to climb out of that hole Tuesday night, rallying to win by double digits in Brooklyn. Friday’s finish was far more humbling.

The Celtics lost to the Nets, 113-105, at TD Garden after trailing by as many as 18 points. The loss dropped Boston to 8-8 on the season and 1-2 in NBA Cup group play, all but eliminating it from knockout-round contention. Brooklyn improved to 3-12.

Jaylen Brown finished with 26 points on 9-of-18 shooting, eight rebounds, four assists and two steals to lead the Celtics, but he picked up his fifth foul midway through the fourth quarter, and his team cratered in his absence.

Anfernee Simons did what he could to supplement Brown’s scoring with 23 points on 10-of-16 shooting, and Neemias Queta turned in 16 points and 12 boards. Derrick White slogged through one of his shakiest games of the season, managing just six points on 2-of-13 shooting, including 1-of-7 shooting from 3-point range.

Just as they did Tuesday at the Barclays Center, the Celtics started slowly against an inferior opponent. Their problem this time wasn’t turnovers — they didn’t have their first of those until the second quarter — but poor shooting.

Boston missed 15 of its first 20 field-goal attempts, including a series of close-range misfires by Queta, Brown and Luka Garza. Payton Pritchard (13 points) pulled the Celtics out of an early seven-point hole by hitting three of his four first-quarter 3-pointers. Brown and Garza drained 3s as the Celtics closed the quarter on an 11-0 run.

Brooklyn opened the second with an 11-2 run while Brown and Pritchard watched from the bench, but Simons revived the Celtics with back-to-back treys, including one off a missed White free throw. A minute later, Simons zipped an entry pass to Queta, who posterized (and proceeded to stare down) Nets big man Noah Clowney with a ferocious one-handed slam.

Simons also threw down his own dunk in transition later in the first half — just the second of the season for the NBA’s 2021 Slam Dunk champion.

But as the first half wound down, the sloppiness that plagued the Celtics three nights earlier reappeared. After committing just three turnovers in the first 21-plus minutes, they had three in the final 2:28 before halftime — one by Simons, an offensive foul on Pritchard and a particularly misguided giveaway by Josh Minott, who had an errant pass picked off by Egor Demin with 7.2 seconds remaining.

Clowney scored at the other end to cap an 11-2 run for the Nets, who led 62-53 at the break. Minott was subsequently benched, not returning to the court until the game’s final minute.

Brown scored nine points in the first four minutes of the second half to keep the Celtics close. But he picked up his fifth foul shortly thereafter when his hand connected with Terrance Mann’s face on a drive. Head coach Joe Mazzulla’s challenge was unsuccessful, and a visibly angry Brown was forced to sit, chucking a towel into the Boston bench as he checked out.

Queta was called for his fourth foul moments later, putting two Celtics starters in foul trouble with more than 17 minutes still to play. The Nets promptly ripped off a 19-4 run with Brown off the floor and took a 92-77 lead into the fourth quarter.

In search of a spark, Mazzulla subbed in high-energy rookie Hugo Gonzalez, who sat for the first three quarters and was a healthy DNP in the previous two games. He also reinserted Queta, Boston’s best all-around big man by a wide margin this season.

That group staged a 9-2 run, featuring two Queta put-backs and five points by Simons, before Brown checked back in for Gonzalez with 7:47 to play.

Brown immediately drew an offensive foul, then fed an outlet pass to Walsh off a Simons steal, then drove for a layup that cut Brooklyn’s lead to 96-90. His shot at the rim one minute later missed the mark, but Walsh soared in for a put-back dunk that made it a two-point game.

That, however, was as close as the Celtics would get. Late 3-pointers by Demin and Michael Porter Jr. (33 points, eight rebounds), followed by a pair of Porter dunks, helped the Nets pull away.

The loss closed out a favorable lull in the Celtics’ schedule. Their last four games were against teams that entered Friday with a combined record of 11-34.

The road gets much more difficult from here. Up next on Boston’s schedule are matchups with the Magic (Sunday; home), Pistons (Wednesday; home), Timberwolves (next Saturday; road), Cavaliers (next Sunday; road) and Knicks (Tuesday, Dec. 2; home).

Then, after a one-game respite against the woebegone Wizards on Dec. 4, the Celtics will host LeBron James, Luka Doncic and the Lakers in a Friday home game on the second night of a back-to-back, then visit the upstart Raptors on Sunday, Dec. 7.

Detroit, Toronto, New York and Cleveland occupied the top four spots in the Eastern Conference standings entering Friday’s action. Los Angeles sat fourth in the West at 11-4, with Minnesota two spots back at 10-6. Orlando is on the upswing after a disappointing start, winning four of its last five and eight of its last 11.

Those teams boast seven players who made an All-NBA team last season, plus Doncic, who leads the NBA in scoring in his first full season in Laker purple.

That daunting stretch will be an early test of Boston’s bona fides. Are the Celtics, who boasted the league’s eighth-best net rating before Friday’s defeat, the type of pesky, hard-playing underdog that can stay competitive in a wide-open East, even without injured superstar Jayson Tatum? Or is there a giant gap between them and the class of contenders they’re about to face?

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