How Payton Pritchard became Celtics’ long-shot maestro: ‘He’s a f—— legend’
Shortly after the NBA Finals ended in June, Payton Pritchard sat with a pen and paper to write down his lessons from the series.
Pritchard’s father, Terry, had long ago suggested journaling to organize his ideas. These days, Payton has five or six notepads, all filled with various thoughts. After grabbing the closest one, he will jot workout plans. He will note how his body feels. He will map out routines and regimens to use. Later, he will return to the pages and reflect on his progress.
“It’s easier to write down your thoughts than to keep it up here,” Pritchard said, pointing to his head.
Pritchard said he sometimes uses a journal as a “burn book,” referencing the movie “Mean Girls.” In that film, a group of high school girls create such a book to write hurtful rumors and gossip about other students. Unlike the girls in that movie, Pritchard doesn’t write cruel things about others, but he does register criticism he hears from certain people. As far back as middle school, he said, he tracked other parents, players or coaches who doubted him. Back then, most people thought he was foolish to dream about playing Division I or reaching the NBA.
“I knew the people who said that s—,” Pritchard said. “And I wrote their names down. I have everything in the book.”
Pritchard’s best NBA season had ended unforgettably. After years of frustrating competitions for playing time, he had seized his most consistent minutes off the bench for the Boston Celtics. During a 4-1 NBA Finals win against the Dallas Mavericks, he had stamped himself as the “heave god” with two of the biggest shots in the series. The second, a 49-foot first-half buzzer-beater in Game 5, had all but sealed Boston’s first championship since 2008. It was the culmination of Pritchard’s long journey to becoming the Celtics’ master of hopeless situations. They weren’t hopeless for him.
“That dude,” Jaylen Brown said of Pritchard’s Game 5 heroics. “He’s a f—— legend, man.”
On the night Pritchard cemented his team’s championship, he sat on the bench until the final four seconds of the first half. The previous 23 minutes and 56 seconds stuck with him. He believed he defended well throughout the playoffs but noticed his offense dried up. As a result, his playing time dwindled late in the series. Never again would he give his coaching staff a reason to sit him.
On a piece of paper, Pritchard detailed the parts of his game he would need to change.
“I never wanted to have that feeling again of not playing,” Pritchard said. “Having to get better in every area so there’s never a game where they feel like I shouldn’t be on the court.”
Some details of “The Alchemist” have escaped Pritchard since he first read the book in high school, but one theme spoke loudest to him. In the quest for treasure, only giving up promises failure.
“You’ll always get to where you’re going as long as you don’t quit,” Pritchard said. “So that’s my mindset.”
Known for his elite work ethic, he said he pushed himself harder over the summer. After returning from the Olympic training camp, where he was a member of the U.S. select team, he organized a daily basketball version of “Squid Game.”
Four or five times per week, Pritchard welcomed two, or preferably three, college or professional players who would do nothing but defend him for roughly two hours a day. Even when traveling, Pritchard said he would find capable players to guard him and hit the gym. Though he couldn’t always find the positions he wanted, Pritchard sought to have one guard, one wing and one center to defend him during each session. He wanted players of different sizes, armed with different strengths, to simulate the scenarios he would encounter in a real game. He didn’t want anyone he could beat with pure quickness — only athletes he would need to out-fox with skill. He wanted competitors.
“That’s one of his non-negotiables,” said Brooks DeBisschop, a 6-foot-10 professional center in Spain, one of Pritchard’s closest friends and a workout regular. “He doesn’t want people that aren’t competitive around him because if you get people who don’t really care about winning and losing, he feels like you’re losing your edge.”
At each training session, the 6-1 Pritchard would play one-on-one with the defenders at seven spots, according to his brother Anthony Mathis. A 6-3 guard who played pro in the G League and overseas, Mathis often lined up against Pritchard in drills. At each spot, Pritchard would place two cones to restrict the space he had to move. If he scored on at least three of five possessions, he would win. For each win by one of the defenders, Pritchard would put money into a pot. When he shut out one of the defenders at a spot, Pritchard would take money out. Some days, DeBisschop said, the pot would grow as big as $500.
The three defenders of the day cycled in for one another, ensuring they could rest. Even so, DeBisschop said he’d be exhausted late in a session. Pritchard stayed on the court the entire time. The defenders would be physical and the competition was heated. Pritchard never stopped.
“His conditioning, that might be his best trait,” said DeBisschop, who met Prichard when he was 9. “I mean, people look at Payton and go, ‘Oh, well, he doesn’t have typical NBA size or athleticism and some of these things.’ But what he does have is an uncanny ability to perform work at a high level repetitively.”
Even as a child, Pritchard regularly worked out several times a day. He said he would wake up 30 minutes before Mathis, who lived with the family after Pritchard’s parents became his legal guardians. Pritchard wanted to do a ballhandling workout before Mathis had opened his eyes. With his work, Pritchard wanted to send a message to his older brother.
“I didn’t need to say it, but just so he knew that I already had a leg up on him,” Pritchard said. “I don’t know if it’s crazy of me to think that way, but I just wanted him to know that I was always going to be a step above.”
Pritchard said he doesn’t want to win every game but every day, every drill, every second.
“I looked at it instead of just winning the games, I was going to win by outworking people,” Pritchard said. “That was considered a win to me.”
Pritchard first started working out against full-time defenders in the summer after the 2022-23 season. He said he got the idea after reading that Kobe Bryant used to compete against players lower on the roster in games up to 100. In the 2009 book, “The Art of the Beautiful Game,” Chris Ballard wrote that Bryant, while at Lower Merion High School, used to square off in such one-on-one games against a benchwarmer on the team.
Pritchard tweaked the idea to fit his vision.
“It can be boring playing one-on-zero,” Pritchard said, “but having somebody there that’s trying to stop you every time keeps me hungry to bust they ass every day.”
During his second year of such workouts, Pritchard carried motivation from the finals. Other than his two long heaves during the series, he entered the offseason disappointed by his performance. He shot 7 of 28 from the field in the series, including 3 of 16 from behind the arc.
“It lit a fire under me,” Pritchard said. “Am I willing to sacrifice for the betterment of the team? Of course. But I never want the reason why I’m not playing to be the way I was playing. I wanted to get better (over the) summer and show that I’m capable of playing at the highest levels.”
Pritchard focused on improving his off-the-dribble jump shot. He searched for new ways to create extra space off the bounce. He added more movement 3-point shooting to his game. He pushed his conditioning, so he could run at top speed longer than his opponents.
“It’s just putting myself in different situations,” Pritchard said. “It’s not necessarily doing a certain drill, it’s certain situations where they’re guarding me, what’s the right shot to get to here? If they play it a certain way, if I’m on this side of the court and they guard me at this angle, then I should get to this shot, these shots. Just having an arsenal for those different things.”
At the end of a session, Pritchard and the defenders would compete in a free-throw contest to determine who won the cash. If the contest finished in a tie, the players would move to half court to determine the winner. While Pritchard shot free throws, Mathis and DeBisschop said the defenders would try their best to force him into misses. An 85.4 percent career free-throw shooter, Pritchard usually won the free-throw contest. That meant no matter how long his competitors defended him, they normally left without any money to show for it.
But most defenders weren’t there for the cash. Mathis said he did it for the opportunity to grow as a defender by guarding Pritchard daily. DeBisschop also wanted to push his defense and pick up as much of Pritchard’s edge as possible. At West Linn High School in Oregon, where the teammates won four straight state championships, DeBisschop said the entire program began following Pritchard to the gym in the early mornings. His habits became theirs.
“It’s almost like through osmosis,” DeBisschop said, “you get some of that from him.
“Just being around him every day makes me better.”
Pritchard improved, too. Mathis said the Celtics guard’s shot-making ability “skyrocketed” as a result of the competition.
“I took that (finals disappointment) into the summer and went to work,” Pritchard said. “And I think it’s allowed me to make a jump this year.”
Payton Pritchard and his older brother Anthony Mathis at Oregon in 2020. (Soobum Im / Imagn Images)
According to Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla, Pritchard’s tenure as a late-clock specialist began more than a year before the heaves in the NBA Finals. Ironically, the role was born out of disaster.
After missing a left-handed layup that would have beaten the Cleveland Cavaliers at the end of regulation on March 6, 2023, Pritchard fell to the court with a damaged heel. On the play, Pritchard streaked the length of the court to create a good look in the final 5.8 seconds. The injury forced Pritchard to miss the next three weeks, but Mazzulla had discovered a pair of aces up his sleeve.
“You could tell that his speed was going to be a weapon in those full-court situations,” Mazzulla said. “And then his willingness to want to shoot those. It just gives us (another) weapon.”
The Celtics began looking to Pritchard more frequently late in quarters. Mazzulla trusted the guard would never fear to release a shot before the final buzzer. No matter the circumstance, Pritchard will shoot.
When players try to preserve their shooting percentages by intentionally waiting for the clock to run out, Pritchard sees only cowardice.
“Soft mentally,” Pritchard said. “Worrying about a shooting percentage. It’s very weak. You care about your individual shooting percentage more than winning. That’s so soft.”
Nobody describes Pritchard that way. Since the beginning of the 2023-24 season, he has had 33 field goal attempts during possessions that begin with 10 seconds or fewer left in any quarter. Outside of Jayson Tatum, who has 25 such shot attempts, and Brown, who has 19, nobody else on the Celtics has even tried more than Derrick White’s 11. Across the NBA, only Anthony Edwards and De’Aaron Fox have more attempts than Pritchard in such situations during that time.
Naturally, because of the difficulty of such tries, Pritchard misses desperation shots more often than he makes them. He has drained eight out of 33 such attempts, including four of 22 3-point attempts, since the beginning of last season. Still, the makes all represent momentum swings.
Pritchard delivered two blows to the Mavericks in the finals. The first one came in Game 2. With 3.3 seconds left in the third quarter, the Celtics inbounded the ball to Pritchard. He dribbled past half court, created a few feet of separation from defender Derrick Jones Jr. and banked home a 34-footer that increased the Boston to nine points. On the court, some Mavericks players were hanging their heads before walking into their huddle.
After the game, in the locker room, Mazzulla thanked Pritchard for taking the shot.
“The humility and the toughness to go in and take that shot with three seconds,” Mazzulla told the Celtics players, “that’s the difference between winning and losing.”
In Game 5, when he checked in with four seconds left in the first half, the Celtics were instructed to give him the ball on their next touch. It came after Luka Dončić missed a free-throw attempt. Al Horford grabbed the rebound and immediately looked to throw an outlet pass to Pritchard. He saw Dončić approaching to contest but knew the All-Star would not close the gap quickly enough. Pritchard told himself to put the ball up in the air and give it a chance. At first, he was oblivious to the chaos building around him.
“You’re just so into the moment,” Pritchard said. “I’m not watching it; I’m doing it. Everybody else was watching it.”
Payton Pritchard has become a fearless 3-point shooter for Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla. (Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
Some of the doubters have faded over time, but Pritchard said he occasionally still finds content to put in his burn book.
“Definitely, there’s still people that doubt how far I can make it,” Pritchard said. “I know for sure they think that. There’s people who will always put limitations on me.”
Pritchard declined to divulge names he has written down during his NBA career but confirmed one old entry. In high school, ESPN ranked Pritchard below a guard from Washington, JaQuori McLaughlin, who went on to play college basketball at Oregon State and UC-Santa Barbara before spending some time on a two-way contract with the Mavericks. As DeBisschop recalled, he and Pritchard were scheduled to play against McLaughlin in a summer game at a University of Oregon team camp shortly after the rankings came out.
“It literally didn’t mean anything,” DeBisschop said of the run-of-the-mill game.
It meant something to Pritchard.
“He was like, ‘This guy thinks he’s better than me,’” DeBisschop said. “And he went and dropped 45 (points) just because he felt disrespected.”
Oregon has no official record of the game, and years later, DeBisschop could be misremembering the details. Still, to him, the tale illustrates Pritchard’s determination to prove others wrong.
“I had to go put 40 or 50 on his ass,” Pritchard said.
Pritchard still hears the critics for extra motivation but rarely needs much. He has good days and bad days, and he said he needs both.
Pritchard has found resiliency in every setback. His mindset allowed him to win a competition for playing time at Oregon. It carried him through seasons when the Celtics didn’t play him much, including during the 2022-23 season, when he grew frustrated enough to publicly discuss his desire to land on a team with more opportunities.
Pritchard believes his journey would have broken some weaker players.
“I’m not going to sit here and say it’s always easy,” Pritchard said. “At times, I think for everybody, the thought of giving up or quitting always creeps into people’s heads. You’re so frustrated, you don’t know if you can do it, you think, ‘F—, am I capable of doing this?’ But I always look at it like just get to the next day and keep grinding away at it.”
Pritchard has experienced more good days this season. Entering Wednesday’s game against the Spurs, he’s averaging 13.9 points, 3.8 rebounds and 3.5 assists and has established himself as one of the league’s premier bench scorers. His statistics show how much his offseason work has paid off. Even while increasing his 3-point volume by more than two attempts per 36 minutes, Pritchard is on pace to set a career high in 3-point percentage (41.6). Pritchard ranks eighth leaguewide in made 3-pointers and 23rd in 3-point shooting percentage. Considering how many 3-pointers he takes and the difficulty of those attempts, the latter rank is even more impressive. Only one player, Edwards, has made more 3-pointers than Pritchard with a higher percentage. Pritchard’s average 3-point shot distance of 27.06 feet shows he is regularly firing from well beyond the arc.
He has established himself as one of the front-runners for Sixth Man of the Year. Brown said he thinks Pritchard is “pretty clear ahead of the pack” in the race.
Pritchard has improved in all the areas the finals showed him he needed to develop. Ironically, his success in end-of-clock situations has evaporated, but that’s likely in part because of how closely opponents focus on him in such situations.
After allowing Pritchard to sink a buzzer-beater on Oct. 28, Doc Rivers was furious the Bucks disregarded the scouting report on how to limit him late in the clock.
The next time the Celtics played Milwaukee, Rivers’ team aggressively sent multiple defenders toward Pritchard on the final possession of the first quarter. Even with just 2.7 seconds left in the quarter, the Bucks worried about Pritchard’s ability to convert a heave from beyond half court.
Increased attention from defenses isn’t the only reason Pritchard’s desperation shots have missed lately.
“They’re just not easy,” Pritchard said of those shots. “I don’t practice them. Yeah, I haven’t even really been close. But I feel like, in the moment, when we need one, you can always trust that I’ll be able to get it close at least and give it a chance.”
Regardless of whether the heaves go in, Pritchard will keep launching them. The same competitiveness that guided him in those moments drove him to dig deeper in the offseason. As much as his game has evolved since he first entered the NBA, he said his ambitions haven’t changed.
“I have no goals that involve people having to vote for me,” Pritchard said. “My goals just involve me becoming the best version of myself. And the only way I could get there is by continuously working and being able to perform at the highest of levels. And competing. And obviously, that comes with winning.”
Pritchard sees the journals as an important part of his process. Whatever he writes down about this season, expect next summer’s dreams to be even larger.
“I talked to him the other day,” DeBisschop said, “and he’s already talking about plans for this summer, what we’re going to do and how we’re going to turn it up another notch. He’s never resting on his laurels or content with where he’s at. And I don’t think he ever will be.”
Angel Reese and Shedeur Sanders (via Imagn Images)
