The Boston Celtics beat the Charlotte Hornets 87-75 on Sunday in Las Vegas to move to 2-0 in Summer League play, and for the second straight game the story was the same: Boston’s collection of second-year players and roster hopefuls simply worked harder than the other team.
Dillon Mitchell led the way with 24 points on 10-of-20 shooting and eight rebounds — seven of them on the offensive glass. That last number is the one worth sitting with. Summer League boxes are full of empty scoring lines, but seven offensive rebounds from a wing is effort that translates: extra possessions, transition kick-outs, the stuff that wins a fifteenth roster spot. Milos Uzan ran the offense with a game-high six assists, and John Tonje knocked down three 3-pointers as Boston went 14-of-35 from deep.
Charlotte, last summer’s Las Vegas champion, led 21-17 after the first quarter and never led again by more than seven. Boston took control with a 25-point second quarter, stretched the margin to 19, and leaned on its defense the rest of the way — the Hornets committed 25 turnovers and shot 8-of-28 from three. Liam McNeeley kept Charlotte within reach with 20 points and eight rebounds, but the Hornets fell to 1-2.
The win follows Friday’s 83-80 overtime escape against Toronto, and the two games together sketch the same picture. This is not a summer roster built around one lottery pick’s showcase; it is a group of players auditioning for jobs on a team that just cleared the luxury-tax line and has real minutes open behind a reshaped rotation. For a franchise that spent the last decade paying for star talent, the margins — a Mitchell, an Uzan, a Tonje — are where the next good Celtics team gets cheaper to build.
Boston continues its Vegas schedule this week with the Summer League round-robin running through July 19.
For fantasy purposes, nothing here moves redraft boards. Mitchell is a deep-dynasty name only, and his path to NBA minutes runs through defense and offensive rebounding rather than usage — the profile of a two-way or end-of-bench candidate whose fantasy value depends entirely on whether he cracks a regular-season rotation. Uzan and Tonje are watch-list stashes in leagues that roster 25 or more.
