It’s no coincidence that amid the Celtics’ best stretch of basketball this season, Payton Pritchard is playing the best basketball of his career.
Over the course of Boston’s 20-3 stretch, Pritchard has been one of the team’s most reliable contributors – especially in March, and even more so in the past week. On Monday, it was announced that he was one of five nominees for East Player of the Week, along with New York’s Jalen Brunson, Milwaukee’s Damian Lillard, Indiana’s Pascal Siakam, and the winner – Pritchard’s backcourt mate, Derrick White.
Following Monday night’s 15-point effort in Atlanta, Pritchard has now scored at least 14 points in six straight contests. He’s scored in double digits in 11 out of 14 games this month, including nine of the last 10.
But that’s not all. Boston’s backup point guard is also shooting the ball at an elite clip, assisting at one of the highest rates in the league, and his assist-to-turnover ratio has been extraordinary.
In Boston’s last five games, Pritchard scored the third-most points on the team behind Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. During that stretch, he has averaged 18.4 points per game while shooting 53.8 percent from the field, including 45.9 percent from 3-point range.
In the last six games, Pritchard handed out 46 assists, while committing only five turnovers. The only two players who dished out more during that same stretch were Atlanta’s Dejounte Murray (57 assists) and LA’s James Harden (47 assists); though Murray had more than three times as many turnovers (16) as Pritchard, and Harden had twice as many (10).
Pritchard now has the sixth-best assist-to-turnover ratio in the NBA at 4.3/1 and his miscues have been nearly non-existent over the last few games, as you can see below
“Payton’s been great, and I’m not surprised, to be honest,” Brown said last week of Pritchard’s recent ascension. “Some guys just have a certain mentality they carry themselves with. Payton is somebody you don’t worry about. Even in the lowest of times, he’s a hard worker and his mindset is phenomenal in terms of a relentless, never-give-up, warrior-type mentality. So you put him out there, I’m not surprised at anything we’re seeing now. It’s just now the work is coming to fruition.”
While Pritchard’s scoring and facilitating have been earning a lot of praise, he’s also been impacting the game in several other areas under the radar.
“Everybody always talks about his shooting,” Joe Mazzulla pointed out, “but I think this year, in particular, he’s been impacted by his rebounding, he’s been impacted by his defense, his pace, getting down the floor and getting us into our actions quick in the shot clock, getting into the paint and finding guys. He’s just becoming a really well-rounded player who knows he can have a positive impact on the game in many different ways, and it’s a huge asset for us.”
Pritchard has become an increasingly valuable asset as the season has gone on, and that’s all part of the reason why the Celtics have been nearly unstoppable over the last 20-plus games.
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