There are bounce-backs.

And then there’s what the Celtics did Friday night.

Two days after stumbling through their worst shooting performance of the season in Denver (37-23) - a 34.9% outing that produced a season-low 84 points - Boston returned to TD Garden and delivered one of the most efficient offensive performances the NBA has ever recorded.

Not hyperbole. Not recency bias.

History.

The Celtics (39-20) dismantled the Brooklyn Nets (15-44) 148-111, while shooting 52 of 78 from the field (66.7%) and 22 of 34 from three (64.7%).

The raw percentages were staggering on their own. The advanced metrics were even louder:

An 80.8% effective field-goal percentage and an 82.6% true shooting percentage - both the highest marks ever recorded in a single game in the shot-clock era.

To put that in franchise context, Boston hadn’t shot this well in a game since November 21, 1984 (67.9%), with the only other better showing coming in 1990 (67.0%).

That’s Larry Bird-era air.

And this wasn’t empty calorie scoring in a sleepy midseason track meet.

It was surgical.

“I thought we just did a good job reading the game,” head coach Joe Mazzulla told the media postgame. “We made the right reads throughout most of the entire game.”

The word “reads” is the key.

The Celtics didn’t reinvent themselves from Wednesday to Friday.

They didn’t install a new offense. They didn’t suddenly discover space on the floor.

They simply made the same shots they generated in Denver.

Jaylen Brown put it simply during his postgame scrum:

“We were due for some makes.”

But “makes” undersells what happened. This was geometry executed at full speed.

Boston assisted on 38 field goals - a season high. Only 14 of their 52 makes went unassisted.

After halftime, they committed just three turnovers.

In the second half alone, they shot 71.8% from the floor and 71.4% from deep while assisting on 20 of 28 baskets.

Midway through the third quarter, the competitive portion of the evening ended in a 51-16 avalanche.

This is what it looks like when decision-making and shot-making sync up.

Brown led with 28 points, 9 assists and 7 rebounds. Nikola Vucevic matched him with 28 points and 11 boards. Payton Pritchard added 22.

The trio combined for 78 points on 27 of 37 shooting and 11 of 12 from three.

They became the first trio of Celtics teammates to each score 20-plus while shooting at least 80% from deep in the same game.

Brown and Vucevic also joined rare company:

The only Celtics duo since Larry Bird and Robert Parish (1982) to each score at least 28 points on 69% shooting in the same contest.

For Vucevic in particular, the night mattered beyond the numbers.

His screening unlocked actions. His decisiveness - rolling, popping, attacking mismatches - gave Boston’s spacing a new layer. Mazzulla said he “looked comfortable.” Brown called it a “great step forward.”

When Boston’s newest piece plays instinctively, the offense expands.

Yes, Brooklyn owns one of the league’s weaker defensive profiles.

Yes, this wasn’t a playoff atmosphere.

But historic efficiency is historic efficiency.

Including the postseason, this marked the third-highest field-goal percentage in Celtics history during the shot-clock era. The 64.7% from three was the most efficient performance ever by a team with 20-plus makes.

And all 13 Celtics scored.

That’s not just hot shooting. That’s systemic dominance.

All of this unfolded with Jayson Tatum still sidelined, now 41 weeks removed from his Achilles rupture.

With speculation swirling about a possible return Sunday against Philadelphia - a game flexed into prime time - Boston’s eruption underscored something important.

They’re not surviving.

They’re thriving.

Tatum himself acknowledged he’s “hyper aware” of how well the team has been playing. At 19 games over .500 and winners of five of six since the All-Star break, the Celtics sit firmly in contention mode.

Friday wasn’t just a correction from Denver’s cold spell.

It was a reminder of their ceiling.

Sometimes slumps invite overanalysis.

Sometimes the answer is simpler:

Miss good shots one night, make them the next.

And sometimes - rarely - you make so many that you end up rewriting the record book.

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Tom Carroll is a contributor for Roundtable, with boots-on-the-ground coverage of all things Boston sports. He's a senior digital content producer for WEEI.com, and a native of Lincoln, RI.