With Halloween just days away, Payton Pritchard conjured some magic to leave the Chicago Bulls spellbound in the third quarter.
Pritchard started the season slowly. The ball has been sticking in his hands, and his shots haven’t been falling. In the two outings leading up to Monday’s game, he was averaging 10.5 points, 2.5 rebounds, and 2.5 assists, shooting 33.3% from the two-point range and 37.5% from deep.
Those numbers are far from awful, save for his overall field goal percentage (35.7%), but they’re not what we’ve come to expect from Pritchard — especially when he’s operating in a sixth-man role.
Interestingly, Pritchard’s touches per game have noticeably dropped over the opening two games. Last season, he was averaging 67.9 touches per night — good for third on the team. Those touches dropped to 51 per night in the games against the Detroit Pistons and New York Knicks, placing him fourth behind Jayson Tatum, Paul George, and Derrick White.
“I really couldn’t put my finger on it, but I think you could look, the last couple years,” Pritchard said of his slow starts to the season during his postgame news conference. “I just have games where it’s very non-aggressive, kind of just out of rhythm. But, you know, it’s a long season. Try to give myself forgiveness of it, even though it ate away at me. Even though we got the W. I’m like, I want to perform better and be better for our team. So, you know, tonight was coming out with just an aggressive mindset and just kind of played free and just attacked the paint.”
Things changed for Pritchard when facing the Bulls.
Part of that may be that Chicago isn’t the best defensive team. I mean, they’re not even a middle-of-the-road defensive unit. After four games, Chicago sits 28th in the NBA for Defensive Rating, allowing 120.2 points per 100 possessions.
Another part of it is that Chicago has been outscored by an average of 11.5 points in third quarters through its opening four games.
It’s also true that Pritchard was never going to struggle for long. He puts too much work in. He’s too confident in his abilities. And the Celtics have thrust him into a larger role within the offense. All he needed was for his shots to start clicking.
And click they did.
Pritchard dropped 19 third-quarter points for the Celtics. He went 5-of-5 from the perimeter and 7-of-8 from the field.
This is the version of Pritchard the Celtics need moving forward. The version that likely gave Brad Stevens some level of comfort when he opted to part ways with Jaylen Brown earlier this summer.
Data backed up that decision, too.
