Payton Pritchard’s 25 points and Jayson Tatum’s 23 led the Boston Celtics to a dominant 144-106 home win over the Jaylen Brown-less Philadelphia 76ers in the C’s second preseason game of the 2026-27 season.
The game provided first glimpses of Paul George and Mitchell Robinson playing in green, and marked Derrick White, Jayson Tatum, Neemias Queta, Payton Pritchard, and Sam Hauser’s return to action. All seven sat out of Thursday’s preseason opener against Cleveland.
Boston’s starters included White, Jordan Walsh, Tatum, George, and Robinson. Hauser, Queta, and Pritchard came off the bench for their first minutes of the year.
Ron Harper Jr. was out with right shoulder soreness and Devin Carter, who starred in the game against Cleveland, was out with an illness.
The Sixers deployed a starting lineup of Tyrese Maxey, V.J. Edgecombe, Justin Edwards, Dean Wade, and Jabari Walker. Joel Embiid, LeBron James, Brown and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope were inactive for Philly.
The Celtics’ starters looked clunky in their first minutes together, and couldn’t get much going early. Tatum and George both missed a couple midrange shot attempts and Tatum missed Robinson on an early alley-oop attempt. It was Edgecombe who broke the ice with an and-1 reverse layup, and Philly took an early 8-0 lead while Boston was still back-rimming every shot it took.
Tatum was passing well early, regardless of all the missed shots. He got it to White and Walsh for a couple open three-point attempts, but they bricked both. Robinson finally put the C’s on the scoreboard with a putback dunk, and White scored Boston’s second bucket of the game. George clunked another midrange shot attempt, but got fouled and hit 1 of 2 free throws for his first points as a Celtic.
Boston didn’t get it going until about halfway through the first quarter, when shots started falling. Queta and Hauser were the first substitutions of the game and injected some life into the offense, but JT also kicked into gear. He got a dunk off a George steal for his first points of the game, made a nice pass to a slashing Queta for an easy bucket, and hit a couple three-pointers to cut Philly’s lead to 16-15 with less than 3 minutes to go in the opening frame.
Over those final minutes, JT hit a tough midrange shot and hit a cutting Hauser with a clean dime to secure the Celtics’ first lead of the game, 19-18. By the time Pritchard ended the quarter with a couple free throws, Boston had a 24-20 lead over Philadelphia.
The Celtics maintained their momentum from the end of the first quarter with some hot shooting and hard rebounding in the second.
Robinson opened the frame and was active banging down low, but the whole team was active on the boards. One offensive rebound resulted in a Pritchard three-pointer, and Robinson put another back for a bucket of his own.
Baylor Scheierman and Hugo Gonzalez also provided some good energy off the bench. Scheierman made a nice pass that resulted in a Hugo Gonzalez bucket, then got a steal on the very next play. Gonzalez drew an offensive foul on one play and knocked down an open three-pointer soon after to put the Celtics up 38-28 four minutes into the quarter.
While the first quarter was close, the second quarter was a one-sided bloodbath.
Pritchard (who scored 11 points in the quarter) got hot and hit a few three-pointers to keep Boston rolling, JT came back in to play the last half of the second quarter, and George — who was racking up steals and deflections left and right — finally got his shot to fall.
The C’s really started to pull away in the latter half of the second quarter. Hauser got a steal and passed it forward to JT for an easy transition dunk. The next play down, White got another steal and got it to George, who hit an open three-pointer that forced the Sixers to call a timeout in an attempt to stop the bleeding. But, by that point, Boston was already up 53-35.
George hit another three-pointer a few minutes later to secure a 21-point Boston lead with less than a minute to go in the half. Boston ended the half with a 63-42 lead and won the quarter 39-22.
Pritchard led the C’s in first-half scoring with 15 points and 4 assists. Tatum had 14 points and George racked up 11 points, 5 rebounds and 4 steals.
Edgecombe led Philly with 14 points, 3 assists and 4 steals.
The second half opened with a couple ugly missed free throws from Robinson, but Walsh put on a show as the C’s kept their collective foot on the Sixers’ neck. He got a slick block that resulted in a White three-pointer, then got a three-pointer of his own while capitalizing on Robinson’s gravity down low.
Philadelphia seemed to increase its effort on the court, but it didn’t make too much of a difference early in the third quarter. White got a couple buckets, Walsh got another three-pointer, and Tatum hit a three-pointer to put the C’s up 85-61 with about five-and-a-half minutes to go in the quarter. George got his fifth steal of the game on the next play and dunked it to extend the lead even further.
Despite the big lead, the Celtics didn’t take their foot off the gas. Philly’s shots were no longer falling, as Boston’s defensive activity stifled the Sixers’ offense, but everything was going right for the C’s. Tatum made a nice underhanded pass to Pritchard for a deep three-pointer, then got a steal on the next play. After a Gonzalez layup and another Pritchard 3, Boston had a 31-point lead with less than 2 minutes to go in the third quarter.
With the help of another three-pointer — this time from Hauser — and a couple Pritchard free throws, the C’s ended the quarter with a 104-69 lead.
With the win all but secured, the Celtics opened the final frame with Pritchard, Hauser, Scheierman, Gonzalez and Garza on the floor. Garza immediately racked up two offensive rebounds — one off a miss of his own — and made a putback layup for the first points of the quarter.
The squad kept up Boston’s torrid pace on both ends of the court. Garza got another putback layup and Scheierman got a couple of steals, which resulted in three-pointers for both Hauser and himself.
After the C’s took a 124-88 lead with 6:52 to go, Boston subbed in Dillon Mitchell and Chris Cenac Jr. But the fun didn’t end there. Gonzalez hit another three-pointer and Mitchell made a layup soon after. Cenac got a couple easy buckets, including a strong dunk which gave the Celtics a 138-94 lead with 3 minutes to go in the contest.
With the help of Gonzalez’s fourth three-pointer of the night (he hit all four attempts), the Celtics finished with a 144-106 win — the highest scoring preseason win in franchise history.
Tatum, who didn’t play a minute of the fourth quarter, ended the game with 23 points on 47.4% shooting from the field and 40% shooting from deep, 5 rebounds, 4 assists and a steal.
Pritchard had 25 points, 7 assists and 4 rebounds.
George finished his first game as a Celtic with 13 points, 5 rebounds, 4 assists, and 5 steals.
Robinson had 6 points, 5 rebounds and 1 assist.
Gonzalez, White, and Hauser finished with 17, 15, and 11 points, respectively.
On the other end of the court, Edgecombe finished with 19 points, 4 assists and 4 steals.
Overall, Boston dominated the Sixers on the boards, 70-41, including an 18-7 difference in offensive rebounds, and put up 11 more shot attempts than Philadelphia.
The Celtics’ next preseason game will be against the Charlotte Hornets at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 14, at home in TD Garden. The game will be broadcast on NBC Sports Boston and locally live-streamed via Peacock.
Boston will face Philly again in its preseason finale on Friday, Oct. 16, before the regular season begins with a road game against the Detroit Pistons on Tuesday, Oct. 20.
