Payton Pritchard scored a game-high 23 points, including buzzer-beaters to end the first and second quarters, to lead the Celtics past his hometown Portland Trail Blazers on Monday night.
The Oregon native went 8-for-17 from the field and 5-for-11 from three as Boston grinded out a 102-94 win at TD Garden. An injury to his left pinky finger — which Pritchard said has bothered him for a month — briefly sent him to the locker room during the fourth quarter, but he later returned.
“I’ll be all right,” the Celtics guard said after icing his finger postgame. “I’ve been dealing with it, jamming it back and forth. And then you just kind of hit it, and it goes sideways a little bit. But when you play basketball, you deal with finger injuries.”
Jaylen Brown added 20 points, eight rebounds, five assists and four steals for the Celtics, who improved to 29-17. Derrick White committed a career-high eight turnovers but clinched the win with a 3-pointer and a steal in the final minutes.
The Trail Blazers, who were playing without leading scorer Deni Avdija (back), got 19 points from Jerami Grant, 18 from Toumani Camara and 14 from former Celtics guard Jrue Holiday, who played his first game back in Boston since his offseason trade to Portland.
“Any time you keep a team under 100 points, you give (yourself) an opportunity to win,” Brown said. “I think defensively, we did that. Offensively, it wasn’t as crisp as it could be, but we did enough to get the job done.”
The Celtics opened with one of their most dominant quarters of the season, outscoring the Blazers 32-11 through balanced offense and smothering defense. Portland had as many turnovers (four) as made field goals in the frame, and Boston’s frontcourt duo of Neemias Queta and Amari Williams limited Blazers big man Donovan Clingan’s impact on the glass.
The 11 points were the fewest scored by a Celtics opponent in any quarter this season.
Williams, pushed up to No. 2 on the center depth chart with backup center Luka Garza (illness) inactive, impressed in extended action. During one early sequence, the two-way rookie flushed a dunk, blocked a short jumper by Grant, then converted an and-one layup against ex-Celtic Robert Williams III, who faced his former team for the first time since his 2023 trade to Portland.
Later, Amari Williams intercepted an inbounds pass and drew a foul in transition. By halftime, he’d already set or tied his career highs in most categories, including minutes (16), points (four), rebounds (five), blocks (two) and plus/minus (plus-15). The Kentucky product finished with nine points and seven boards in 26 minutes.
“I thought Amari did a great job today,” Brown said. “I thought he looked exceptional. He came out, he protected the rim, he was where he was supposed to be for the most part. Amari made it easy for us tonight. Any given night, depending on how the team is playing us, that communication has to be great.”
Fellow 2025 draftee Hugo Gonzalez also made an immediate impact, finishing a tough layup off a feed from Williams seconds after subbing in.
The Celtics honored Holiday, a core member of their 2024 NBA championship team, with a video tribute after the first quarter — then watched him lead a Blazers rally to start the second. The two-time NBA champion scored eight quick points, including two 3-pointers, as part of a 12-3 Portland run.
Holiday’s squad hung around during a rock-fight second quarter that featured 17 total fouls and 12 turnovers, but Boston reestablished control with a 14-4 run that stretched into the second half. A Pritchard three, followed by a fast-break White dunk, put the Celtics ahead 61-41 early in the third.
Boston’s lead plateaued there, however. Threes from Holiday and Camara, layups by Caleb Love and a succession of Grant free throws trimmed the deficit to 10 by the end of the quarter as the Celtics’ offense began to stagnate. Brown and Pritchard accounted for nearly all of their team’s scoring over the final eight-plus minutes of the third, providing 12 of its 14 points during that stretch.
Portland cut it to single digits early in the fourth with a pair of at-the-rim makes by Robert Williams III, the second of which Holiday set up by stealing an errant White pass. Clingan — a former UConn star who piled up 18 rebounds in the teams’ previous meeting, a 114-108 Blazers win on Dec. 28 — also upped his activity with two fourth-quarter putbacks.
But the Celtics made the plays necessary to prevent a full-fledged comeback.
In one key sequence, Gonzalez dove on a loose ball after a Simons steal and fed Sam Hauser for an open 3-pointer. White then answered a Clingan basket with a momentum-shifting three. Pritchard did the same after a Camara triple.
Portland got to within five points in the final minute before White canned a nail-in-the-coffin 3-pointer with 24.1 seconds remaining.
“I think the first half was us playing great two-way basketball,” Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla said. “I thought our offense was good, but our offense was good because they didn’t have any offensive rebounds and we didn’t foul. Second half, they turned up the pressure a lot. We were competing, but we weren’t executing. I thought that kept us in it, and I thought we were forced to have to execute in the halfcourt. Which, they make the game look ugly, but I thought we did a good job of executing.”
The Celtics will continue their four-game homestand Wednesday against the Hawks (7:30 p.m.). Atlanta will be without former Celtics center Kristaps Porzingis, who has been sidelined since Jan. 7 with Achilles tendonitis.
