The leading men in the Celtics 128-118 win over the Blazers were Derrick White and Payton Pritchard, but a lot happens behind the screens (pun intended).
Every Academy Award acceptance speech has many of the same elements: actors thank their parents, their family, their agents and managers, their directors, their co-stars, etc. Athletes are similar. After a big performance in a big game, they’ll credit their coaches and teammates, too.
After combining for 84 points and being the first Celtics duo to both score 40-plus in the same game, Derrick White (41 points, 9-for-17 from 3) and Payton Pritchard (43 points, 10-for-16) were modest with their career games, instead deflecting the attention and giving props to the team for a team win.
“Tonight could have been Sam Hauser’s night and he hits 10 to 15 threes. DWhite does what he does. JB could have 50,” Pritchard said after falling one short of tying Marcus Smart’s record for most triples in a game by a Celtic.
“I don’t go into any night thinking, ‘oh, it’s my night.’ You read the game and the ball ended up finding me. Next game, the ball might not find me at all, but how am I going to impact the game? That could be with rebounding, assists. Obviously, if I get shots, I gotta be ready to hit ‘em, but every night is a different look. You just gotta be prepared for it.”
White echoed those sentiments.
“Tonight was fun, but we know what the bigger picture is. We know what we’re working for and what we’re working towards,” White said. “It’s not about me. It will never be about me. Whatever the team needs, whatever it is that night, I gotta do it and help us win games.”
Humble responses from two team players that are likely on the short lists for individual awards at the end of the regular season (Sixth Man of the Year and All Defense respectively), but there’s no way around it — Pritchard and White couldn’t miss on Wednesday night.
What makes the accomplishment all the more remarkable is that it came against the Portland Trail Blazers — the young upstarts rank 4th in the league in opponents’ three-point field goal attempts a night (35.8). The Celtics, of course, by far put up the most in the NBA (48.1). Something had to give and even on a night when Boston was without Jayson Tatum, Kristaps Porzingis, and Jrue Holiday, they managed to get up 54 threes, 33 of them coming from Pritchard and White.
Some of them were certainly of the heat check variety. As a team, Boston is 256 three-pointers away with twenty games to go from tying the 2022-23 Golden State Warriors for most threes in a regular season. You don’t get near that record without a couple of three-point attempts taken to check the temperature of the room.
The others, however, were a product of Mazzulla Ball and to generate quality three-pointers, you need good shooters and space for those good shooters to get them up.
“Screen reads are important, regardless of who we’re playing against. You have to know what the coverage is and who’s there,” head coach Joe Mazzulla said. “The player development staff does a good job teaching that and the guys are dilligent about knowing what screen is needed. Usually, when you see a good possession, the right screen is set. When you see a bad one, we don’t set the right one.”
To start the second half, Mazzulla opted to swap out Luke Kornet for the hot-shooting Pritchard. Before halftime, the Celtics closed on a 24-8 run going away from their double-big look and opening the floor with perimeter players. With Donovan Clingan playing almost exclusively in drop coverage, Boston set their screens higher up on the floor to create even more space for Pritchard and White to work off the dribble.
Al Horford hit a pair of triples in the win, but his most effective role against the Blazers was neutralizing their athletic wing defenders with hard picks. Scoot Henderson is a strong, rugged defender, but a flip of Horford’s hips is enough to stop Scoot from scooting, giving Pritchard enough space to hit the pull-up three.
“I just make sure that my guy runs into the screen,” Pritchard said. “They’re unbelievable screen setters. They get you wide open. The job as a guard is to set your guy up, run him into it, and then make the right read after that.”
The Celtics are 7th in screen assisted points per game (21.8) with nearly all of Boston’s rotational big men averaging two screen assists per game.
Other threes came from more traditional sources. With Tatum on the shelf, Jaylen Brown took on more of a playmaker/attention getter/driver/post-upper role in the offense and led the team with eight assists.
“Everybody was just doing a great job of finding us and creating for us. I feel like JB found me so many times getting me good open looks on the right play,” White said. “Him and Al just setting great screens. It was just a whole team effort and they kind of all just combined to what we did.”
Goodnight from the fellas pic.twitter.com/VoifKB51DY
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) March 6, 2025
So, while last night provided podium games and early showers for backcourt, both stressed that the most important thing was that the team got the win and that the team deserved their flowers, too.
