What the Boston Celtics Can Expect From Payton Pritchard

This is the next installment in a series of pieces examining what the Boston Celtics can expect from each of their players this season. Today, its Payton Pritchard. Tomorrow: Boston’s full center rotation of Mitchell Robinson, Neemias Queta, Luka Garza, and Amari Williams.

Others in the series: The Rookies, Mike Conley, Paul George, Jordan Walsh, Baylor Scheierman, Hugo Gonzalez, Ron Harper Jr.

Payton Pritchard keeps finding ways to do big things for the Celtics. For a 6-1 guard picked at the bottom of the first round, Pritchard has added enough to his game to easily be a lottery pick in a redraft of the 2020 class.

This past season, it was a new wrinkle in his offensive game that made him one of the league’s masters of the paint non-restricted area. The 61.5% he shot from 3-10 feet from the basket put at or near the top of the list from that spot for most of the season.

We should be used to seeing new things from Pritchard. He’s a high-level NBA player with an insane drive to improve, and it shows. He tossed in a step-through move to add a counter to his long-two fadeaways. He has developed a step-back three-pointer that, we’ll just say “maximizes” the NBA’s gather-step rules. He has figured out paths to the offensive glass to snag second chances amidst the trees.

Pritchard has figured out so much about himself as a basketball player that it’s easy to wonder if he’s unlocked just about everything there is to unlock at this point of his career.

“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.”

It’s an important admission for a player at this stage of his career. He will turn 29 in the middle of this upcoming season, which obviously isn’t old, but it’s also a point where a player mostly is who he is. There isn’t much room to push the sliders higher, which means he’s stepping into his “play smarter, not harder” phase. And that makes his 2026-27 season very interesting.

There are plenty of people expecting another big leap from Pritchard. With Jaylen Brown gone, there are a fair amount of Celtics fans expecting Pritchard to flourish and jump into All-Star contention.

I don’t think that kind of leap is coming. What I expect is for Pritchard to look very similar to how he looked last season, which is to say he’ll still be very good, very often. At the same time, he’ll have enough tough shooting nights and bad matchups that will hold him back some.

First of all, I still think he’ll come off the bench with this roster. He and Derrick White will still be the only two pure ball-handlers on the team who can handle big minutes. Mike Conley can chip in, but he’s not going to play enough to have a major impact on the rotation. We know Jayson Tatum will initiate plenty of the offense, but the Celtics will still need to stagger their two point guards to help keep the pressure off him.

Secondly, Pritchard started 50 games last season and his efficiency suffered. Maybe Brown bears some of the blame because both he and Pritchard are isolation-heavy players, but just swapping Jayson Tatum in for Brown isn’t going to radically change much. Pritchard’s style is much more helpful off the bench because he can spend more time cooking and finding his own shot.

His usage rate went up 1% coming off the bench, so he could do a little more with the ball in those situations, but true shooting was 3.5% better. His three-point shooting was 34.8% as a starter, which is well below his standard, but it was 42.9% as a reserve.

Pritchard is simply better off the bench. It’s the best way to get the most out of him. He can still play starter-level minutes, and he can still close games, but the Celtics will need someone to create his own shot when Tatum is off the floor, and Pritchard might be the second-best Celtic at doing that.

To me, it’s almost a waste of his talents to start him because it takes creation opportunities away. He can still spot up and be a great catch-and-shoot guy, but the Celtics have other guys who can stand in the corners and shoot threes. He’s obviously good enough to be a starter, but the Celtics are their best when he’s coming off the bench.

There is no harder worker than Pritchard, so he’ll find a new wrinkle somewhere. He’ll do something this season that makes us mutter “that’s new” under our breath. And maybe he’ll average 18 or 19 points a game because he’s figured out how to be a little more efficient. Maybe he’ll drop an extra assist or two because he’s dutifully studied the game and picked out more opportunities to help his teammates.

He’ll be very good. He’ll be Payton Pritchard. We shouldn’t expect anything less than that, but we shouldn’t go overboard expecting more.

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