The Celtics avoided their first three-game losing streak of the season Sunday with a gritty 110-103 victory over the Denver Nuggets at TD Garden.
Jaylen Brown’s 22 points paced a balanced offensive effort from Boston, which was playing without starters Kristaps Porzingis (illness) and Jrue Holiday (mallet finger) for the second straight game.
Al Horford (19 points, eight rebounds) nearly matched the scoring output of Denver’s two-time NBA MVP, Nikola Jokic (20 points, 14 rebounds, nine assists). Derrick White continued his hot shooting streak by going 5-for-11 from 3-point range and scoring 17 points. Jayson Tatum finished with 16 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists, though he and Brown both struggled with ball security (11 total turnovers).
Jamal Murray and Christian Braun scored 26 and 24 points, respectively, for Denver, which was missing starting forward Aaron Gordon.
Brown decisively won his matchup against Murray in the first quarter, scoring 12 points on six shots while Murray, who averaged 24.7 points per game in February, was held scoreless. The Celtics went 6-for-10 from 3-point range in the quarter, including a pair of corner threes from Payton Pritchard, and led 32-20 after one.
Pritchard and Sam Hauser teamed up to make five of their first six 3-point attempts as Boston built a 20-point first-half advantage.
Mazzulla utilized more of his abbreviated bench than he did Friday, when only Pritchard and Luke Kornet were the only reserves to play significant minutes in the loss to Cleveland. Against Denver, Horford and Kornet started in place of Holiday and Porzingis, and Pritchard, Hauser, Neemias Queta and Torrey Craig all put in quality shifts off the bench.
Queta and Craig, who are not part of Mazzulla’s regular rotation, grabbed eight first-half rebounds to help Boston maintain its edge with Tatum and Brown sat, though Queta also picked up three fouls during that span.
Limiting Jokic’s supporting cast is critical against the Nuggets, and Boston did that early. The rest of Denver’s roster shot a combined 4-for-14 from the field in the opening frame. Braun heated up in the second quarter (16 points before halftime), however, and the Nuggets went into half down 61-48.
The Celtics opened the second half with a 7-0 run that featured a steal and a fast-break dunk from Horford. But Denver responded with a 14-5 run, then scored 10 of the final 11 points of the third quarter as Boston’s offense deteriorated. The Celtics made just one field goal in the final 4:54 of the third — a jumper in the lane by Tatum, who had three fouls, two turnovers and a missed technical free throw in the quarter — and carried a slim 83-77 lead into the fourth.
Three straight buckets from the Celtics’ second unit — a Queta dunk, a Hauser three and a baseline layup from Pritchard — made it a 10-point game, but the Nuggets again rallied. A straightaway three from Jokic cut the lead to four with 5:57 remaining. Denver then countered a White-to-Kornet lob and a White 3-pointer on back-to-back Boston trips with consecutive threes from Braun and Murray, who was far more effective over the final three quarters.
Murray slithered in for a layup that made it 102-99 Celtics with 1:15 remaining, then blocked Brown’s jumper on the ensuing Celtics possession. But White corralled the loose ball and scored a second-chance floater, and a Murray turnover at the other end gave Boston the dagger: another fast-break bucket from Horford off a turnover he, White and Brown helped force.
Brown assisted on Horford’s decisive layup and blocked two shots in the fourth quarter, helping offset his 0-for-5 shooting over the final 17 minutes.
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