BOSTON – After a week of free time with some players in quarantine and others just limited to the work they could do through the NBA’s Health and Safety Protocols, the Celtics looked more rested than rusty.
Boston built up its lead from start to finish and rolled the Orlando Magic, 124-97, for their fifth consecutive win Friday in TD Garden.
Even without Jayson Tatum, the Celtics scored six players in double figures as players increased their offense up and down.
Jaylen Brown was only cleared Friday afternoon, but led Boston by 21 points and eight assists.
Payton Pritchard thought he had more to lose than most with the dismissal, as the rookie waved before the team closed for three games. But he kept going where he left off and made four three-pointers en route to 16 points.
The Celtics led by as many as 28 in the fourth quarter, allowing Brad Stevens to use his 12 healthy players and rest some of the players who were inactive.
Boston (8-3) stays home and hosts the New York Knicks for the first time this season, Sunday at 1 p.m.
With Tatum out and several Celtics returning from quarantines, Stevens made a different setup and added Grant Williams and Jeff Teague to the top five, with Marcus Smart, Brown and Tristan Thompson. This meant that Daniel Theis came off the bench for the first time in the 2019-20 season.
The series worked, but most of them did it against Magic. Teague seems to benefit the most from the start. He scored the Celtics’ first five points, took an early charge and had 10 points in the first half. He finished with 17 points, the most since 19 on the opening night.
After the Celtics took a 34-28 lead after the first quarter, the Magic scored the first seven points of the second to take a short lead 35-34, but Pritchard buried a three-pointer around a run of 10 -1 to start bringing Boston back into control. The lead reached 14 before Orlando cut it to 60-48 at halftime.
As in the second quarter, the Magic made some room to start the third before Boston extended its lead even further. Orlando came 74-68 within six points, but Brown got a pull-up in the lane in one possession and found Pritchard for a 3-point lead on the next to start 9-0, bringing the final tension of the extinguished deafness.
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