It was a classic trap game — a quick one-game road trip against a lottery-bound, injury-ravaged opponent with nothing to lose — and it nearly ensnared the Celtics.

Boston trailed early in the fourth quarter against the remnants of the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday night before locking in late and pulling away for a 117-112 win at FedEx Forum.

Backup center Luka Garza helped the Celtics survive the upset bid by scoring a season-high 22 points and pulling down six of his team’s 18 offensive rebounds. It was the latest in a string of positive outings in what’s been a career year for Garza, who was pushed back into head coach Joe Mazzulla’s rotation after Nikola Vucevic fractured his finger on March 6.

“He was great on both ends of the floor,” Mazzulla told reporters postgame. “He was great defensively. He was great offensively. He does a great job screening. They play a hectic style. They put a ton of pressure on you from a physicality standpoint, and you have to be able to read and make plays and play through physicality, and no one’s better than Luka. … I thought he was great tonight.”

Jaylen Brown finished with 30 points, six assists and five rebounds — his third straight 30-point game — and Derrick White scored 11 of his 14 points during Boston’s resurgent fourth quarter.

The Celtics also withstood the first true dud for Jayson Tatum since his return from Achilles surgery earlier this month. The superstar wing grabbed nine rebounds but had as many turnovers (three) as made field goals (3 for 15, season-low 11 points).

The Grizzlies were missing nearly all of their recognizable names, from former All-Star Ja Morant (elbow) to second-year big man Zach Edey (ankle) to veteran guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (finger). When first-round draft pick Cedric Coward was scratched for personal reasons before tipoff, he became the 11th Memphis player to be ruled out for Friday’s matchup.

Of the 12 Grizzlies who played in the team’s 131-95 loss at TD Garden on Nov. 12, just three were in uniform for the rematch (Jaylen Wells, Olivier-Maxence Prosper and Cam Spencer). Their top scorer on Friday was a player who had made just four previous NBA appearances: Tyler Burton, who tallied 23 points on 7-of-13 shooting (5-of-9 shooting from 3-point range) while playing on a 10-day contract.

The Celtics, meanwhile, were nearly whole. Their only unavailable player Friday night was Vucevic, who made the trip to Memphis as he recovers from surgery. (The veteran center is scheduled to be reevaluated in late March or early April and could return in time for the playoffs.)

It took quite a while for that mismatch to show up on the court, though. Seven minutes in, the Grizzlies held a 19-16 lead and were controlling the shot margin.

Payton Pritchard (19 points, 5-of-13 shooting) sparked his team’s sluggish offense with 10 points on 4-of-5 shooting during one four-minute stretch, with Garza converting the sixth man’s lone miss into an and-one put-back. Pritchard closed the first quarter with a mental error, however, taking too long to bring the ball across halfcourt after DeJon Jarreau shook Hugo Gonzalez on a driving dunk.

The eight-second violation resulted in one of Pritchard’s four turnovers, but Gonzalez atoned for his defensive lapse by racing for a buzzer-beating fast-break slam after a Baylor Scheierman steal. The rookie’s highlight-reel finish put the Celtics ahead 29-27 after one.

But Memphis regained the lead moments into the second quarter and held it for the next five minutes. The Celtics weren’t able to create any distance from their pesky hosts until Brown hit a pair of 3-pointers late in the half — one off a nifty underhanded pass by Neemias Queta, the other off a Scheierman offensive rebound. Strong work on the offensive glass was a saving grace for Boston, which grabbed 10 first-half offensive boards (by eight different players) to offset poor shooting from most of its perimeter players.

Tatum, who’d been quiet to that point, added a 3 of his own to snap an 0-for-8 start and put the Celtics up 55-48. That cushion quickly shrunk, however. Burton hit back-to-back threes to cut Memphis’ deficit to one at halftime, 55-54.

The Celtics then struggled with ball security throughout the third quarter, committing five turnovers in the period to the Grizzlies’ zero. Memphis scored on all five of Boston’s giveaways as it built two six-point leads.

Burton also baited Brown into multiple costly fouls, including one with less than a second remaining on the shot clock. By the end of the third quarter, the 26-year-old had scored as many points (20) as he had in his entire NBA career before Friday.

Garza drew contact on the Celtics’ final possession of the third, then scored on two of their first four trips of the fourth. Ty Jerome matched those makes with eight quick points, and Jaylen Wells turned an errant Pritchard pass into a fast-break layup that made it 98-91.

Only then did Boston finally begin to look like a championship hopeful playing against a skeleton-crew opponent. White responded with three straight baskets to tie the game, followed by two more makes at the rim by Garza.

“He’s amazing,” White said in a postgame interview with NBC Sports Boston’s Abby Chin. “He plays so hard every single second he’s out there. He does so many little things for us and is the ultimate competitor. Big plays all game, really, kind of kept us in it, and huge plays on the stretch.”

The Celtics then reinserted Tatum and Brown, who both sat for the first 6:19 of the fourth quarter, and ripped off the remainder of a 21-5 run. A Scheierman layup — capping a possession kept alive by two Garza OREBs — all but sealed the win, putting Boston up 112-103 with 1:47 remaining.

The lineup Boston used to start that rally (Pritchard, White, Gonzalez, Scheierman and Garza) had not played a second together before Friday night.

“Everybody can impact winning, and we’ve developed different identities and lineups to be able to go to, and we just have to have a trust in one another that we can impact winning,” Mazzulla told reporters. “I thought that just, that lineup hadn’t played the game, and I wanted to just give a different feel to a segment of the game. We went to a couple different actions, and I thought it was just a different feel there. So it’s a credit to the guys to just know that many lineups you can be able to play, and I thought that lineup was big time.”

With the win, the 47-23 Celtics maintained a 1 1/2-game lead over New York for the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference, though they were unable to gain ground on first-place Detroit. The Pistons, who won their second straight game without injured star Cade Cunningham, remain four games up and hold the tiebreaker over Boston.

Next up for the Celtics is a tough three-game homestand that begins Sunday against the Minnesota Timberwolves, who will not have the services of injured All-Star Anthony Edwards. The defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder — whom Boston nearly upset last week in OKC without Tatum and White — will be at TD Garden on Wednesday, followed by a visit from the surging Atlanta Hawks on Friday.

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