After their worst start to a season in a dozen years, the 2025-26 Celtics finally secured their first victory Monday night in New Orleans.

Boston rode a well-rounded scoring effort and a dominant fourth quarter to a 122-90 win over a Pelicans team that was playing without injured star Zion Williamson.

Six Celtics players scored in double figures, led by Anfernee Simons’ 25 off the bench on 9-of-17 shooting (6-for-13 from 3-point range). Josh Minott (15 points, nine rebounds) was an all-around difference-maker in his first career start, with Boston outscoring New Orleans by a whopping 42 points across his 28 minutes.

Payton Pritchard navigated the paint well to finish with 18 points and eight assists, and Boston got productive outings from big men Neemias Queta, who racked up seven offensive rebounds and four blocks, and Luka Garza, who hit his first three 3-pointers in a Celtics uniform on four attempts to finish with 16 points.

After struggling to hold multiple double-digit leads earlier in the game, Boston scored 31 of the final 35 points — all while headliner Jaylen Brown watched from the bench in foul trouble.

“I thought we played well-connected basketball, getting stops, keeping them off the free-throw line and then executing on the offensive end,” Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla told reporters in his postgame news conference.

The 1-3 Celtics will return home to host the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night at TD Garden.

Mazzulla trotted out his third different starting lineup of the season against winless New Orleans, inserting Minott alongside consistent starters Derrick White, Pritchard, Brown and Queta.

Minott was a DNP-CD last Friday night in New York, but he gave the Celtics some strong minutes off the bench on Sunday. His 10 points and two steals in the first four minutes of the fourth quarter helped spark an ill-fated late-game rally in Detroit.

That effort earned the fourth-year wing his first NBA start — he got the nod over Hugo Gonzalez and Sam Hauser on the second night of a back-to-back — and it took him all of six seconds to register his first highlight, skying to throw down a White lob off the opening tip. Minott, one of Boston’s top performers this preseason, also grabbed four rebounds and drew a foul on an aggressive crash during his first six-minute shift.

The Celtics built a 14-point first-quarter lead but had trouble protecting it, much like they did in their loss to the Pistons one day earlier. The player who caused Boston the most consternation after its strong start was, of all people, 37-year-old big man DeAndre Jordan, who just signed with New Orleans last week. Jordan’s two emphatic dunks fueled an 8-0 Pelicans run that cut the C’s lead to 34-32 three minutes into the second quarter.

Mazzulla reinserted Minott at that point, and the athletic 22-year-old again helped shift momentum back toward Boston. In the ensuing 90 seconds, he sank a layup, grabbed a defensive rebound, blocked a Trey Murphy III 3-pointer and drilled one of his own. Shortly thereafter, Minott pulled down an offensive board, stole a Saddiq Bey pass and slammed home a less-than-graceful fast-break dunk.

Dunk? 10/10
Landing? Room for improvement 🤣 pic.twitter.com/16yuS4ZQBT

— Boston Celtics (@celtics) October 28, 2025

The awkward Minott slam stretched the Celtics’ lead back to double digits. They led 65-54 at halftime, with Minott, Brown, Pritchard and Simons all scoring in double figures in the first half. Minott was a plus-18 over his 12 first-half minutes, second-best behind Pritchard’s plus-21.

New Orleans staged another rally midway through the third quarter, getting buckets from Bey, Murphy and Yves Missi on four consecutive possessions to cut its deficit to four. The Celtics were able to weather that charge, as well, thanks to the contributions of two other wings.

Second-year pro Baylor Scheierman, used sparingly over Boston’s first four games, recovered a loose ball to set up a second-chance 3-pointer from Hauser. Scheierman then recorded his first points of the season with a 28-footer. Hauser, who’s come off the bench in the last two contests after starting the first two, also ran through an illegal screen to draw an offensive foul as Boston held New Orleans to just four points over the final four minutes of the third quarter.

Boston’s backcourt then broke the game open for good. White smothered a Jordan drive in midair — despite giving up seven inches and 75 points to the veteran center — to ignite a 25-2 Celtics run that featured three Simons 3-pointers. Simons more than doubled his previous season total of made threes in the win, flashing the electric scoring ability the C’s hope he can provide in his new role as their sixth man.

The Celtics made that closing kick without Brown, as he sat out most of the fourth quarter after picking up his fifth foul with 10:12 remaining. Brown took issue with the officiating crew earlier in the game, picking up a technical foul while arguing a call. He finished with 15 points on 5-of-9 shooting, seven rebounds and four assists after being listed as questionable with a hamstring injury.

Other observations:

— Defensive rebounding was a massive issue for the Celtics during their first 0-3 start since 2013. They were much better in that area Monday night.

Though it helped that the Pelicans did not have Williamson (who grabbed five offensive rebounds in each of his first two games), Boston held them to 11 OREBs on 59 missed shots, three of which came in the final two minutes.

The Celtics finished with a 54-35 edge in total rebounds.

— Simons had his best 3-point shooting night as a Celtic, but Pritchard (2-for-7) and especially White (1-for-9) are still lagging behind their usual 3-point efficiency. Pritchard was able to offset some of his issues by going 5-for-8 on 2-point field goals, with four of those makes coming from between eight and 11 feet out.

Boston’s guard trio entered the game shooting a combined 25.6% from beyond the arc. The Celtics as a team have yet to shoot better than 35% from deep in a game this season.

— The two players left out of Mazzulla’s ever-changing rotation were Gonzalez and Jordan Walsh. Walsh, who’s logged just three minutes all season, didn’t see the floor until garbage time, and Gonzalez was a healthy DNP one day after making his first NBA start.