The Pelicans couldn’t win their first two games with Zion Williamson in the lineup.
Without him they weren’t competitive in a 122-90 loss to the Boston Celtics on Monday night in the Smoothie King Center.
Williamson watched from the bench in street clothes due to a bone contusion in his left foot. The injury apparently occurred during a 120-116 overtime loss to visiting San Antonio on Friday night, which came two nights after a 128-122 loss in the season opener at Memphis.
But even though the Celtics had lost their first three games and were completing a back-to-back after losing at Detroit 105-95 on Sunday, they had no trouble beating New Orleans for a ninth consecutive time.
Boston raced to a 14-point lead during the first quarter, led by eight at the end of the period, by 11 at halftime, by nine after three quarters and routed the home team 35-12 in the fourth quarter.
“It’s one thing to not win a game,” head coach Willie Green said. “It’s a whole other thing to get kind of punked on your home floor. I’m part of that. It’s not just our (players), it’s all of us.”
Green said “the most difficult” part of the performance was the Pelicans’ “lack of toughness.”
Jordan Poole, the Pelicans’ leading scorer after Williamson, led the team with 22 points, but made just 5-of-14 shots. Trey Murphy III, the third-leading scorer, finished with seven points, 11.5 below his average.
Rookie Derik Queen had 12 points and Herbert Jones and Saddiq Bey scored 11 points each as did Yves Miss, who returned from a one-game absence due to a sprained right ankle.
Missi finished with a team-high seven rebounds, but New Orleans was still out-rebounded, 54-35, by a team that had been outrebounded 107-75 in its last two games.
In Williamson’s absence Green rewarded guard Jeremiah Fears, who had been impressive in the first two games, with his first NBA start, but the No. 7 overall pick missed 10 of the 11 shots he took and finished with two points, two assists and one steal in 26 minutes.
Anfernee Simons scored 25 points and led a barrage of 3-pointers, making 6-of-13 while the Celtics finished 18-of-53, compared to 9-of-36 by the Pelicans. Payton Pritchard scored 18, Luka Garza had 16, Jaylen Brown and Josh Minott had 15 each and Derrick White scored 11.
The Pelicans begin a three-game road trip when they visit Denver on Wednesday. They’ll face the Los Angeles Clippers on Friday and the reigning NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday before returning home to face Charlotte next Tuesday.
When Williamson will return is undetermined though Green said the injury, which “popped up” Monday morning “didn’t seem like it was too serious.”
Jones went to the bench after committing his fourth foul barely a minute into the third quarter, and he was replaced by Bey, who made two 3-pointers to help the Pelicans trim the 11-point halftime deficit to 75-71 midway through the period.
Sam Hauser and Baylor Scheierman each made a 3-pointer and the Celtics extended the lead to 87-78 at the end of the third quarter.
Poole’s 3-pointer got New Orleans within five points early in the fourth quarter, but Simons made two 3-pointers and Hauser added one to extend the lead to 102-86 and the deficit kept growing and growing.
The Pelicans scored just four points in the final 9:13 of the game against a team that had allowed a 42-point quarter in each of its first two games and allowed a total of 70 in the second and third quarters on Sunday. New Orleans shot just 33.3 percent (28-of-84) from the floor.
“They kept their composure and we did not,” Murphy said.
The Celtics led by as many as 14 points during the first quarter before finishing the period with a 34-26 lead as Brown scored nine points.
Veteran center DeAndre Jordan, signed as a free agent by New Orleans last Friday, made his debut to start the second quarter and made a dunk 14 seconds into the period. The Pelicans scored the first six points of the period to get within two points.
Boston rebuilt the lead to 14 points on its way to a 65-54 halftime lead.
