ATLANTA – Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla particularly praised center Neemias Queta, who on November 4th became the first Portuguese player to start a National Basketball Association (NBA) game.

Jayson Tatum scored 28 points and nine assists for the Celtics as they cruised to a 123-93 win over the Atlanta Hawks.

Derrick White added 21 while Payton Pritchard scored 18 points off the bench to help Boston win for the third straight season. Jrue Holiday scored 16 and Queta had 10 points and seven rebounds and Sam Hauser also scored 10.

“He’s just grown a lot as a player, and honestly, he doesn’t know how good he can be,” Mazzulla said of Queta.

“He has a great ceiling, so the standard is very high. I thought he did some great things for us tonight, but when you’re as good as he can be, he just has to do it – we all have to keep him at that level every night.”

The player himself didn’t make much of his first NBA start.

He said: “Same attitude as always, play as hard as I could, always try to make the right play.” But the nerves from the first start, you never really know… but I didn’t think about it.

“I was just happy to be out there.”

Injury-ravaged Atlanta, which lost its fifth game in six tries, was led by Jalen Johnson with 20 points and 11 rebounds.

Star Trae Young, who averaged 27.0 points per game, was limited to a career-low two points on 1-for-10 shooting from the field, including 0-for-6 from three-point land. He played 23 minutes and left in the third quarter with a strained right rib.

Onyeka Okongwu scored 18 points and 10 points while Zaccharie Risacher scored 15 points for Atlanta. David Roddy added 11 and Garrison Mathews scored 10 as the Hawks failed to score 100 points for the first time this season.

After a dominant first half in which the Celtics made 15 three-pointers, the visitors extended their lead to 22 points in the third quarter and took the lead 92-60 thanks to Queta’s dunk after 5 minutes and 29 seconds.

With the game never in doubt after halftime, Tatum assisted Hauser with a three-pointer with 52 seconds left in the third period to extend the lead to 103-73.

After Risacher’s dunk cut Atlanta’s deficit to 112-81 with 7:42 left in the game, back-to-back Pritchard baskets followed by Jaden Springer’s dunk gave the Celtics their largest lead, 118-81, with 6:23 remaining Ending.

“We have some guys that are a little tired and a little reserved,” Hawks coach Quin Snyder said.

“When you go into a game as one-sided as this one, you can take a lot from it. We will try to do that. But right now we feel the pain. “It was a tough loss.” REUTERS