The Celtics beat Philly once again 112-101. As I've said several times at this point, scores don't matter in preseason but you want to see how players perform so you can start to put together rotations for the regular season. The Celtics didn't play Tatum or Brown in this one but we did see some lineups with Al and Porzingis alongside White, Jrue and Hauser and that lineup played really well. Last year, if the Celtics put out a lineup without both Tatum and Brown, it was bad news but this lineup still had 5 guys who can shoot and two guys capable of scoring 30pts on any given night. The Celtics have so much versatility in top end talent this year so Joe will have a lot of flexibility as far as rotations go. We're 3 games into preseason and it seems like an absolute no brainer that Payton Pritchard is going to step into a serious rotational role this year. After 2 monster performances in the first two games, he came out tonight and put up another 17pts. The shooting wasn't as lights out as the first two games but he still looked super solid and could be right in that 7th man position.

After two duds, Hauser did step up and shoot pretty well adding in 15pts on 4-9 from 3. While Hauser did perform, his biggest competition minutes wise is probably Svi Mykhailiuk and Svi didn't disappoint once again. He also added 15pts on 5-6 from the field and he can do something that Hauser cannot and that is put the ball on the floor and create for himself which is a huge asset. Outside of those 3 guys, there aren't a lot of options for consistent rotational minutes. There is a clear lack of front court depth and when you look at that position, we saw Kornet, Queta and Gabriel play today. Kornet played 15 minutes and was pretty useless. Queta saw 8 minutes and actually played significantly better than the last 2 games and didn't foul once which is a huge bonus. Gabriel also got 8 minutes in this one but once again, put up a dud. While there isn't a ton of depth at the front court, it is undeniable that there are a lot of shooters on this team which should make for a very fun season.