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Tim BontempsESPN
Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge grew up in Eugene, Oregon, and after a stellar four-year career at BYU, made a living during his 14-year career in the NBA as a tough, tough guard who could shoot.
Decades later, Ainge fell in love during the drafting process with another Oregon boy. And while freshman Payton Pritchard didn’t go to Ainge’s alma mater, he had a four-year career decorated at the University of Oregon and possessed an NBA quality leap like Ainge’s.
This led Ainge to draft Pritchard with the 26th pick in the NBA draft last November, a selection he and the Celtics hoped could become a small part of coach Brad Stevens’ rotation this season. season. Instead, Pritchard has become a vital part of Boston’s hopes of making another deep playoff.
On Thursday night against the Raptors, Pritchard proved why, scoring 20 points while going 6-8 from 3 points to help the Celtics beat the Toronto Raptors 120-106 on a night when the two stars of the team this season, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, combined to shoot the 8 against 27.
“They attract such a large crowd, so they’re going to have to draw a double team or something,” Pritchard said later. “So it’s our job to space the floor and find openings for them.”
As a four-year college player with a skillful shooting touchdown, Pritchard certainly fits the mold of the type of player capable of making an early impact in the league. Still, it’s a high bar for a rookie to join a team with championship aspirations, like Boston, and become an essential part of the team’s rotation. Newcomer Aaron Nesmith, for example, the 14th pick in the 2020 draft, has played almost nothing.
Pritchard, on the other hand, is now clearly the sixth man on the team. This season he has played in every healthy game this season, and for more than ten minutes in every game except the one in which he suffered a MCL sprain against the Philadelphia 76ers on January 22nd. Even with the games lost, he has scored 3 more points than all but Tatum and Brown in the Celtics this season, while his 46.9% clip behind the arc makes him second only to Desmond Bane. of Memphis (48.2%) among rookies who get at least three triples per game and 10th among all players who have taken so many per game this season.
And while acknowledging that Pritchard is not expected to win six 3s per game, Stevens said he could know right away that the rookie had a chance to make an impact this season.
“Before we started training camp,” Stevens said, “[the draftees] it came a couple of days after the draft, and after some testing it was possible to do small group work, and it could be said that it was quite advanced. “
Part of what has made Pritchard so important is the lack of options around him on the Boston bench. No one questions the Celtics ’high-end talent on the perimeter, between Tatum, Brown, Kemba Walker and Marcus Smart (who is currently out with a beef stump).
Behind them, however, the options are limited. Jeff Teague was signed to be the team’s main safety mainstay, but after scoring 19 points in the Celtics’ opening game of the season, he shot 30 percent from the field (including a terrible 28 % in shots of 2 points) and was fell of the rotation of Stevens, with Pritchard occupying its place like first guard of the bench.
Although Semi Ojeleye scored a maximum of 24 points in his career on Thursday, including his own 6-on-8 performance from the 3-point range, this is not uncommon, as he had come in on Thursday with an average of less. of a 3 per match. The other regular Boston rotation players off the bench: Tristan Thompson, Grant Williams and Robert Williams, bring different skills, but none can be counted on for an instant offense.
Probably no one else on the team can come in to offer this instant offense like Pritchard did on Thursday, and he has done so all season. And while he was a prominent mainstay guard in Oregon, playing on a Boston team with Walker, Tatum and Brown have allowed Pritchard to slide perfectly as an offside player who must respect his opposing defenses. It gives the Celtics top scoring options a vital space to operate and has been good enough defensively to hold up.
And, in a game in which Tatum and Brown missed 19 shots, this spacing – and the hot shot from Pritchard, Ojeyele and Walker – that went from 5 to 8 from a distance of 3 points, allowed them to accumulate 19 assists.
Questions will continue to linger about the depth of Boston. Although Pritchard has clearly established himself as the team’s main guard off the bench and the Boston men’s quartet (Daniel Theis, Thompson and both Williamses) will play a role in it, the team still has no depth. behind his trio of wings in Tatum, Brown and smart.
Courtesy of the $ 28 million trade exception created by the departure of Gordon Hayward this offseason and his status as one of the few contenders to have control of his advancing first-round picks, Boston has the ability to add a piece by next month deadline. And, as the Orient looks open right now, that move could allow the Celtics a chance to break up for good and return to the NBA Finals after reaching the Eastern Conference Finals in three of the last four seasons.
However, Pritchard’s play has helped alleviate some of the worries of scoring from outside Boston’s top picks. As a result, less than two months into his rookie season, Pritchard has made Ainge seem accurate in betting on another four-year-old Oregon college student.