
Down three starters, Celtics breeze to road win over Trail Blazers
The depth of the Celtics’ roster was on full display Sunday in Portland.
Even with Jaylen Brown nursing a bone bruise in his knee and fellow starters Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday both sitting out on the first night of a back-to-back, Boston convincingly defeated the Portland Trail Blazers, rolling to a 129-116 win at the Moda Center.
All nine Celtics who played in the game scored at least four points, and six hit double figures, with Jayson Tatum leading the way with 30 points, nine rebounds, nine assists, one steal and one block.
Sam Hauser added 24 points while shooting 8-for-10 from 3-point range. Derrick White had 17 points, eight assists, three rebounds, two steals and one block.
It was the fifth straight win for the Celtics, whose six-game Western Conference road trip continues Monday night in Sacramento. Boston improved to 52-19 and an NBA-best 28-7 in road games.
Payton Pritchard, who torched his hometown Blazers for 43 points on March 5, made his first start of the season with Brown, Holiday and Porzingis all sidelined. But the West Linn, Ore., native wound up logging fewer minutes than he typically plays off the bench. Pritchard drilled a 3-pointer on his first touch but was whistled for three fouls in the opening five minutes, prompting head coach Joe Mazzulla to sit him down and up the workloads of Baylor Scheierman (26 minutes) and JD Davison.
The vast majority of Davison’s playing time has come in Portland, Maine, where he’s set a slew of franchise records as the leader of Boston’s G League affiliate. Before Sunday, the undersized guard had logged just 42 NBA minutes this season, with all but four of those coming in garbage time. But with Boston’s backcourt options limited, Davison played eight first-half minutes against the Blazers, tallying four points, one rebound, one assist, one steal and one turnover.
Torrey Craig, who’s been an energizer in limited minutes since signing with Boston last month, also saw early action. He grabbed two tough offensive rebounds in his first two minutes of floor time. Both led to second-chance threes by fellow deep reserves — one by Scheierman and one by Davison. Scheierman continued to look far more comfortable with the speed of the NBA game than he did for the first half of his rookie season, though he was the only Celtic to finish with a negative plus/minus (minus-1).
The Celtics played nearly half of the first quarter with a lineup of Tatum, Craig, Scheierman, Davison and Luke Kornet — a preseason-esque quintet that had never shared the floor together — yet still led 34-24 at the end of one.
That lead didn’t hold, however. Portland ripped off a 12-0 run with Tatum on the bench and tied the game on a 3-pointer by ex-Celtic Dalano Banton. Horford halted the Blazers’ rally with back-to-back buckets, followed by a steal and fast-break dunk by White. Those blays shifted momentum back toward Boston, and the Celtics outscored their hosts 21-8 over the final five-plus minutes of the first half.
Included in that flurry were the fourth and fifth made threes from Hauser, who went 5-for-6 from downtown in the first half.
Boston led 64-51 at halftime. Tatum scored just six of those points, but the Celtics dominated when their superstar was in the game, owning a plus-21 scoring differential in Tatum’s 17 first-half minutes. When he sat, they were a minus-8.
Tatum then exploded as a scorer in the third quarter, pouring in 18 points on 11 field-goal attempts, including a highlight-reel and-one 3-pointer over 7-foot-2 rookie Donovan Clingan. Pritchard, who sat the first six minutes of the second half in favor of Scheierman, also emerged, hitting three triples in a 95-second span.
It was not a strong quarter for the Celtics defensively, as Portland scored 39 points and cut Boston’s lead to seven at one point. But their offense simply overwhelmed a Blazers squad that came in ranked fourth in the NBA in defensive rating since the start of 2025.
Kornet scored seven points early in the fourth quarter — part of a 13-point, 6-for-6 showing from the backup big man — to help Boston put the game away.