Payton Pritchard has made a habit of squeezing more out of his game every time the Celtics ask for it. At 6-1 and selected at the back end of the first round, he’s already played his way into territory that would make him a lottery pick in a redraft of the 2020 class.
Last season brought another twist. Pritchard became one of the league’s best finishers from the paint’s non-restricted area, shooting 61.5% from 3-10 feet and sitting near the top of the league from that range for most of the year. That kind of growth has become the Pritchard story: a new shot here, a new counter there, another little edge added to an already deep bag.
He’s worked in a step-through to answer his long-two fadeaways. He’s built a step-back three that, as the source puts it, “maximizes” the NBA’s gather-step rules.
He’s also found ways to crash the offensive glass and steal extra possessions in traffic. That’s why it’s fair to wonder whether he’s already close to fully formed.
“It's becoming more efficient in different areas,” he said on a recent NBC Sports Boston podcast. “The game is more read-based, and if you're making better reads, meaning you take the shot at the right time.
If the double team is there, do you make the right pass? …
“As far as skill development, once you get really good, it's hard to be like, ‘oh, I'm gonna develop a better left-hand dribble,’ or like when you're kind of maxing out, and that it's more mental at this stage and can you just get a little bit better and better.”
That matters because Pritchard is entering the part of his career where the gains are less about adding new tricks and more about making sharper decisions. He’ll turn 29 in the middle of the upcoming season, and the next jump may not be a dramatic one.
There are Celtics fans who are hoping for a bigger leap, especially with Jaylen Brown gone. Some are looking at Pritchard and seeing All-Star potential. But the expectation here is more grounded: he should look a lot like he did last season, which means he’ll be very good most nights and frustrated by some matchups and cold shooting stretches on others.
The role matters, too. Pritchard should still come off the bench.
He and Derrick White remain the team’s two pure ball-handlers capable of handling major minutes, while Mike Conley can help but not enough to reshape the rotation. Jayson Tatum will still run plenty of the offense, and Boston will need to stagger its point guards to ease the burden on him.
The numbers from last season back up the bench argument. Pritchard started 50 games, and his efficiency dipped.
Coming off the bench, his usage rate climbed by 1%, his true shooting was 3.5% better, and his three-point shooting jumped from 34.8% as a starter to 42.9% as a reserve. That fits the eye test, too: he’s at his best when he can spend more time creating, probing, and hunting his own shot.
That’s why starting him can feel like a poor use of his strengths. He can certainly do it, and he can still close games, but Boston needs someone who can create offense when Tatum sits. Pritchard may be the second-best Celtic at doing that.
Even so, the Celtics should expect one more fresh wrinkle from him somewhere along the way. He’s too driven not to keep tinkering.
He might average 18 or 19 points a game if the efficiency improves. He might add a little more playmaking if his film study keeps opening up the floor for him.
Mostly, though, the answer with Pritchard stays the same: he’ll be very good, and he’ll keep finding ways to surprise people.
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