Pritchard scores 19 in one quarter as Celtics bury Bulls

Payton Pritchard scored 19 points in the third quarter Monday night, making all five of his three-point attempts, and finished with 28 points in 22 minutes as the Celtics beat the Chicago Bulls 134-99 at TD Garden. He did it as a reserve and did not play in the fourth quarter. Boston outscored Chicago by 22 points while he was on the floor.

The quarter is the headline, but the pattern behind it is the story. Pritchard took 16 shots in 22 minutes, a rate he had not come close to in Boston's first two games, and the shots were the kind that put a defense in a bind: deep threes and step-backs, many of them created by himself. When the first few fell, the Bulls had no answer.

Nineteen in eight and a half minutes

Pritchard checked in with 8:33 left in the third quarter and Boston ahead 71-59. His first shot of the quarter, a three, went in 38 seconds later. By the time he came out with 2 seconds left in the quarter, the Celtics led 105-75, outscoring Chicago 34-16 while he played.

He scored 19 of Boston's 39 points in the quarter, going 7 of 8 from the field. Five of the seven makes were threes, and the last three came in about a minute, at 1:48, 1:22 and 0:43 on the clock, for nine points. It was the kind of stretch that gets described as going nuclear.

Not all of it came from deep. He also hit a 10-foot fadeaway and finished a driving layup. Right after the layup came two plays that are easy to overlook: a steal off a Josh Giddey pass and an assist on a Sam Hauser three.

Aggression is a choice, and the numbers show it

The most telling number is not the 28. It is the 16 shot attempts in 22 minutes. In the opener at Detroit, Pritchard took 9 shots in 28 minutes and scored 17, helped by 7 free throws. Against New York on Friday he took 5 shots in 30 minutes and scored 4. Last season he averaged 13.8 attempts a game.

Monday's 16 came in fewer minutes than either of those games. Ten of the 16 were threes, and he made seven of them. Four of the seven were unassisted, meaning he created the shot himself. He also passed well: all four of his assists went to Hauser, three of them for threes, and he committed one turnover.

The shot map was not built on paint attacks. He took one attempt at the rim, the layup, and five mid-range shots, making two of them. The aggression was in the volume from three, not in downhill drives. Whether that is the best version of the player is a fair debate, because Boston could use more of both. The plus-minus supports it, though not uniquely: Boston outscored Chicago by 22 points in his 22 minutes, and several teammates posted bigger margins in a 35-point win.

What to watch

Boston plays Brooklyn on Tuesday, Oct. 27, at 7:30 p.m. ET. The test is not whether Pritchard scores 28 again. It is whether his shot count looks closer to Monday's 16 than to Friday's 5, and whether the threes keep coming off his own creation rather than only off passes from teammates. A Pritchard who shoots at that rate gives Boston another scorer who can take over a stretch, and Monday's quarter is the case for it.

Sources: box score and play-by-play data, including 2025-26 game logs.