The Boston Celtics might need another big offensive performance from backup point guard Payton Pritchard when they visit the Charlotte Hornets on Sunday night.

Jaylen Brown, Boston’s leading scorer this season, didn’t play Friday night in a 109-102 victory over the Atlanta Hawks because of Achilles tendinitis, but Pritchard filled the scoring void with a game-high 36 points, including six 3-pointers. He also collected seven rebounds and four assists.

Pritchard has at least 10 points in nine of his past 10 games for the Celtics, who are in second place in the Eastern Conference.

“The points are one thing,” Boston coach Joe Mazzulla said. “But I thought the ball handling, handling the pressure, the offensive rebounding — he had two offensive rebounds in the second half there that were huge for us. So it’s just those big-time plays.”

Those two offensive rebounds led to seven second-chance points.

“It’s just winning basketball,” Pritchard said. “I want to win, so obviously, you want to make a play. You see somebody shoot the ball and I see it coming off the rim, and just fighting, trying to get an extra possession. Those little things can change the game and win a game.”

Pritchard has averaged 25.1 points, 4.9 rebounds, and 7.3 assists in the eight games Brown has missed this season. The Celtics have seven wins in those eight games. Brown is listed as questionable for Sunday’s game on Boston’s injury report.

Boston (49-24) has won six of its past seven games. The Hornets (39-35) are coming off Saturday night’s 118-114 loss to Philadelphia, which ended Charlotte’s five-game winning streak. The team had an 88-73 lead midway through the third quarter but was outscored 26-17 in the fourth.

“In that fourth quarter especially, our defensive focus started to wane a little bit as we were missing shots,” Charlotte coach Charles Lee said. “The guys did a good job the last few games of not letting that be the case, ever. Our shot-making can’t affect our defense.”

Charlotte, which has clinched at least a spot in the Eastern Conference play-in tournament, leads the NBA in made 3-pointers (1,210) and is third in 3-point percentage (38.2).

Rookie Kon Knueppel tops the league in made 3-pointers this season (256), and teammate LaMelo Ball is third (235).

Knueppel scored 20 points when Charlotte beat the Celtics 118-89 in Boston on March 4.

“We understand they’re going to have that edge on their shoulder because of how we did beat them in Boston, and so we need to turn the page,” Lee said. “Learn and turn the page.”

Jayson Tatum also is listed as questionable on Boston’s injury report (Achilles repair management). Tatum has appeared in 10 of Boston’s 11 games since he returned from surgery to repair a ruptured right Achilles tendon last May. The Celtics are 8-2 when he has played.

Tatum played a season-high 37 minutes on Friday night against Atlanta and scored 13 of his 26 points in the fourth quarter.

“Yeah, I mean, just continue to give the game what it needs and then just see where he’s at from a physical standpoint,” Mazzulla said of Tatum’s workload. “There isn’t a specific number (of minutes he can play). It’s more about what looks the best for us, where we’re at, what we need, and we continue to go from there. He played the whole quarter a couple games in a row, and he’s handling it well, and so we just continue to kind of assess that and go from there.”

–Field Level Media

For the past three-plus months, every time the Sacramento Kings visited an Eastern Conference city, they fell short.

The next chance at redemption on the road against an Eastern foe will occur Sunday night when the Kings visit the Brooklyn Nets.

Brooklyn (17-57) has a 10-game losing streak, the longest active skid in the NBA.

Sacramento (19-56) is 6-31 on the road, and its 127-111 win at the Miami Heat on Dec. 6 is among its two away victories over an Eastern Conference team.

Both the Kings and Nets have been eliminated from playoff contention.

In the Kings’ previous road win over the Heat, they started DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine, Keegan Murray, Russell Westbrook and Maxime Raynaud. In recent games, only Raynaud and DeRozan saw major minutes as the club turned to younger players to get a gauge of who can help it next season.

Sacramento began its current five-game road trip with a 44-point loss at Charlotte on Tuesday, but the Kings have been vastly more competitive in the past two contests. After dropping a 121-117 decision in Orlando on Thursday, the Kings absorbed a 123-113 loss to the Atlanta Hawks on Saturday.

Sacramento rallied from a 16-point deficit in the third quarter to forge a 97-97 tie on Saturday before getting outscored 26-16 the rest of the way.

While DeRozan led the Kings with 22 points and Raynaud added 18 points and 10 rebounds, coach Doug Christie continued to get extensive looks at DaQuan Jeffries and Daeqwon Plowden.

Jeffries is on the team via a 10-day contract in a hardship exception while Plowden has played 25 games as a two-way player. Jeffries added 15 points after making his debut Thursday while Plowden contributed 14 to reach double figures for the 10th consecutive game.

“Ultimately that’s what we want is the ability to dominate from the bench perspective,” Christie said after his reserves totaled 45 points. “It’s something that you need on a night-to-night basis because they either take the lead, blow it up or they get you back in the game.”

Sacramento is 7-10 in its past 17 games following a 16-game skid Jan. 18-Feb. 21. Before dropping the first three games of its trip, the Kings outlasted the Nets 126-122 last Sunday.

The Nets are on their second double-digit skid this season and are 2-20 in their past 22 games. Brooklyn ended a four-game road trip with Friday’s 116-99 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, when it was outscored 31-15 in the fourth quarter.

Josh Minott led the Nets with 18 points while Ziaire Williams added 16. Minott, along with rookies Ben Saraf and Chaney Johnson, played nearly the entire fourth quarter, when the Nets shot 6 of 19 from the field.

“We just struggled right there, but the guys competed all the way through, every single of them, everybody that played tonight, played really hard and did great things,” Nets coach Jordi Fernandez said. “Everybody got better, so you compete like this, you find a lot of positives.”

–Field Level Media

The Chicago Blackhawks are limping to the finish line after showing few positive signs in their third season since selecting superstar center Connor Bedard first overall in the 2023 NHL Draft.

Heading into their matchup on Sunday against the New Jersey Devils in Newark, N.J., the Blackhawks have been outscored 11-2 in back-to-back losses to the Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers, keeping them last in the Central Division.

The Flyers are three points out of an Eastern Conference wild-card spot entering play Sunday. The Rangers were the first conference team eliminated from postseason contention when they lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday, two days before they beat the visiting Blackhawks 6-1 to end a six-game losing streak.

Chicago (27-33-13, 67 points) had seven rookies in the lineup against the Rangers.

“We have a whole bunch of guys going through the NHL schedule for the first time, much less this condensed schedule,” Blackhawks coach Jeff Blashill said. “It’s a hard challenge for a group that’s as young as we are, but we’ve got to respond to the challenge. We’ve got to take these opportunities to grow and get better.”

The losses to the Flyers and Rangers came on back-to-back nights, the third time since March 8 that the Blackhawks played on consecutive days.

Blashill said fatigue has become a factor.

“You can kind of tell when teams are in a grind a little bit, but I think right now everybody is,” Blashill said. “Part of fatigue is learning how to play smart. We just got to learn to play a little smarter when we’re tired.”

Tyler Bertuzzi said the responsibility of finishing the season strong falls on all the players, rookies and veterans alike.

“I don’t know if it’s just such a young team, immaturity and we can’t put it together, but it’s on everyone,” Bertuzzi said. “It’s on us older guys to show the lead and have them follow. As a group, everyone, the last few games, we have not been good at all.”

Neither the Blackhawks nor the Devils (37-33-2, 76 points) have officially been eliminated from the playoffs, but it’s on the radar.

New Jersey is coming off a 5-2 loss against the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday in the finale of a five-game road trip (3-2-0).

Carolina beat the Devils in five games in the first round of the playoffs last season and won all four meetings between the teams this season.

Devils forward Connor Brown said the lack of success against Carolina has frustrated New Jersey and it spilled over into Saturday’s game.

“Some emotions got high and were just handled poorly throughout the game,'” Brown said. “Hockey’s an emotional game. You’re playing at such a high speed. It’s violent. When you have scars against a team, sometimes it can be that much harder to manage. So, it’s a big learning moment for this team. To learn, you have to identify what’s going wrong.”

Jake Allen likely will start in goal for the Devils after Jacob Markstrom made 29 saves against the Hurricanes.

Allen has won two of his past three starts and gave up just one goal on 27 shots in the 2-1 loss to the Washington Capitals.

He’s 12-7-4 in his career against the Blackhawks with a .922 save percentage and 2.35 goals-against average.

–Field Level Media