In Detroit, testing went on as Jayson Tatum and Al Horford rested while Jrue Holiday took care of an arm injury. Boston’s 16th 20-point lead in their last 18 games came from small ball, while double-big looks shut the door. The Celtics won 129–102, their eighth straight win. They are now in a good position to lock up the top place in the East before the end of the month.

Early on, James Wiseman put pressure on the Celtics as he started in place of Jalen Duren, who was a late scratch. He played next to Xavier Tillman, who was making his first appearance in Boston’s starting group, and Kristaps Porzingis. The fifth place went to Payton Pritchard, who has been on a roll lately. Wiseman scored eight points in less than four minutes, while Pritchard made his first shot from long range after getting an offensive rebound.

After giving the ball away twice early on, Jaylen Brown scored two points in a row. Then, Pritchard sped things up with two assists to keep up with Detroit’s early scoring. The double-big look slowed Boston down, though, and after pulling Tillman when Wiseman scored 12 points, the Celtics switched to smaller lineups in the second half. Sam Hauser, who had been out for two games with an ankle injury, Oshae Brissett, and Svi Mykhailiuk played the four. Boston briefly led after another big game from Brown, but Marcus Sasser and Troy Brown Jr. made three straight threes for the Pistons to take a 34-32 lead after one.

Pritchard ended the first quarter by making a three-point shot with the four seconds Detroit gave him. Two plays into the second quarter, he set up Hauser for a three-point shot and his fifth assist. The Celtics scored on their next three plays to keep a two-point lead while Sasser and Brown Jr. kept attacking. Mykhailiuk and Derrick White scored back-to-back three-pointers inside to finally make the lead bigger. After five minutes of empty defense, the run reached 10-0, giving the team a nine-point lead. That lead grew to 18 points thanks to threes by Hauser, Brissett, and Pritchard. Pritchard scored 16 points, and the Celtics led 69–53 at halftime.

Since the break in the third, when the Celtics went ahead by 21 points thanks to a 6-0 run, Brown has scored 20 points in every game. Porzingis scored seven points inside and outside the paint, which made the lead as big as 26. Before the end of the third, Tosan Evbuomwan helped the Pistons get within 19 points, but Brown scored nine of Boston’s last 12 points to make the score 33.

With an alley-oop to Luke Kornet early in the fourth, White had eight assists for the third game in a row. Three minutes later, he hit a to help Pritchard get to nine. Kornet fed him back for a cutting make, and then he found Tillman underneath for his first points. This was Tillman’s first game since he switched to more double-double units in the second half after not playing in the first quarter. White had an easy 11 assists thanks to back-to-back Porzingis turns. It was the seventh time in his career that he had that many assists.