What Payton Pritchard needs to do to make this season…

What Payton Pritchard needs to do to make this season with the Boston Celtics a success

After signing a considerable if still team-friendly contract extension ahead of the NBA’s 2023-24 season, backup Boston Celtics combo guard Payton Pritchard has not exactly lit the world on fire on the court. We are not in any way insinuating that the West Linn native has taken his foot off the pedal or is in some way not taking the season as seriously as he should, but rather that Pritchard has yet to carve out a consistent role with the team’s bench unit.

That can be hard to do on a ball club with so much firepower on the offensive end of the court, and harder still considering that head coach Joe Mazzulla has been tinkering with his rotations early in the season. The lack of continuity undoubtedly has complicated the job in front of Pritchard, but in recent tilts things have picked up for the Oregon alum.

Bleacher Report’s Zach Buckley recently made the case for what Pritchard needs to do to make this season a success from his perspective, suggesting that his season to date “has been a mixed bag.”

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“It’s at least been more good than bad, though,” Buckley adds. “He struggled mightily with his shot early on, but he’s really heated up during December.”

“He has also exceeded expectations as an offensive organizer with nearly six times as many assists (2.9 per game) as turnovers (0.5). His challenge moving forward is two-fold, though. One, he needs to prove he can sustain this level of play over a larger sample size. It’s one thing to string a few good weeks together, it’s quite another to be a reliable contributor over the better part of six months.”

“Two, he must continue working to improve as a defender, since he’ll always be targeted at that end as a 6-foot-1, 195-pounder with less than elite athleticism,” writes the B/R analyst.

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If a more stable rotation starts to form and Pritchard’s floor opportunities become more consistent, we think that the first goal is well within his grasp.

But overcoming a significant lack of height as a defender is as much dependent on one’s teammates as it is on craft, making both points not entirely under the Oregon native’s control.

Still things have been trending in the right direction for both to take shape, and with Fast PP having put up a few impactful games of note in recent days, he might already be on that path.