Brooklyn’s Kyrie Irving goes up for a shot against Jayson Tatum, right, and Payton Pritchard of the Celtics during the Nets’ 141-126 win in Game 4 of their first-round playoff series Sunday in Boston. Elise Amendola/Associated Press

BOSTON — The Boston Celtics opened up to full capacity just in time for the local fans to jeer and swear at Kyrie Irving every time he touched the ball.

It might be their last chance.

Irving had 39 points and 11 rebounds to quiet the first post-pandemic full house at the TD Garden, and Kevin Durant scored 42 points to lead the Brooklyn Nets to a 141-126 victory over Boston on Sunday night and a 3-1 lead in the first-round playoff series.

Afterward, as Irving walked off the court where he wore the Celtics’ green from 2017-19, he was nearly hit by a bottle thrown from the stands. The television broadcast showed Irving and Nets guard Tyler Johnson looking into the stands and pointing; video on social media appeared to show police taking a man in a Kevin Garnett jersey out in handcuffs.

“Fans have got to grow up at some point,” Durant said. “I know being at the house for a year and a half … has people stressed out, but when you come to these games you’ve got to realize these men are human. We’re not animals. We’re not in the circus.

“You coming to the game is not all about you as a fan,” Durant said. “Grow the (expletive) up and enjoy the game. It’s bigger than you.”

Irving said he didn’t think banning or even arresting unruly fans would be enough to solve the problem, ascribing it to “underlying racism and treating people like they’re in a human zoo.”

“People feel very entitled out here,” said Irving, who said last week he experienced racism during his time in the city.

“As a black man playing in the NBA, dealing with a lot of this stuff, it’s fairly difficult. You never know what’s going to happen. It’s just unacceptable for that stuff to be happening. But we move on.”

A Celtics spokesman and a spokeswoman for the TD Garden did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“One bad seed doesn’t mean that the whole fruit is poisoned,” Celtics guard Marcus Smart said. “Our fans have been great. We just had a knucklehead do something knucklehead-ish and it got taken care of, so we’re happy for that.”

Brooklyn Coach Steve Nash said he wasn’t surprised Irving bounced back after scoring 16 points on 6-for-17 shooting in the Game 3 loss on Friday.

“It’s Kyrie Irving. He didn’t have a great game last time out. My money’s on him any time after a performance he had,” Nash said. “I loved his will, to take some of this adversity and have a great game.”

James Harden added 23 points and a career postseason-high 18 assists for Brooklyn. Game 5 is in New York on Tuesday night, when the Nets will try to advance to the Eastern Conference semifinals for the first time since 2014.

The 104 points scored by Durant, Irving and Harden tied an NBA playoff record for three teammates set by Boston’s John Havlicek, Jo Jo White and Dave Cowens in 1973 and matched in 1986 by Dominique Wilkins, Randy Whitman and Spud Webb.

Jayson Tatum scored 40 points for the Celtics, following up his 50-point effort in a Game 3 victory. But with Jaylen Brown and Kemba Walker out because of injuries, Tatum couldn’t save the Celtics on his own.

Smart had 16 points and nine assists for the Celtics, who reached the Eastern Conference finals in three of the previous four seasons. This year’s team flirted with a top seed early on and still was in position to host a first-round series well into April before losing 10 of their last 15 games and falling into the play-in game.

After dropping the first two games in Brooklyn, the Celtics were hoping their home crowd would help them make a series of it. Tatum delivered one win in front of a quarter-capacity crowd on Friday, before the COVID-19 restrictions were lifted as of Saturday.

The Celtics left several rows around the benches empty on Sunday and officially announced a sellout crowd of 17,226, about 1,500 fewer than the building’s official capacity.

The fans – most of them attending their first home playoff game in more than two years – gave Durant the New York Yankees treatment in pregame warmups, chanting his name derisively and cheering for each missed practice shot. They were even more foul-mouthed toward Irving, who professed his love for Boston and the Celtics before opting out of his contract in 2019 to join the Nets.

“We know how these people are in Boston. We know how passionate they are about Kyrie – they’re still upset at him,” Durant said. “That’s no reason for them to act childish. There’s no need to speak on that. We got the ‘W’ and hopefully we don’t have to come back here.”

The Celtics scored the first six points of the game and led by as many as nine in the first quarter, but the Nets erased that before the end of the quarter. Durant scored 17 in the first and Tatum had 14, setting the foundation for a star shootout.

But the second was all Brooklyn.

Harden threw in 15 points with six assists in the second quarter, and Irving scored 11 to help the Nets pull away, turning a 34-33 deficit at the start of the quarter into a 73-60 lead.

Tatum was scoreless in the second. He responded with 18 points in the third quarter, but Durant had 17 to help the Nets open a 27-point lead.

TIP-INS

Nets: Durant’s 17 points were the most in the first quarter for the Nets since Kenyon Martin’s 17 in Game 4 of the 2002 NBA finals against the Lakers. … The Nets had 100 points through three quarters of a playoff game for just the second time in history. They also did it on Friday night.

Celtics: Walker (knee) and Robert Williams III (ankle) sat out after playing in the first three games of the series, joining Brown (season-ending wrist surgery) on the injury report.