After turning into 2024 NBA champions, the Boston Celtics proceed to excel within the 2024-25 NBA season, at present sitting in second place within the Japanese Convention with a 17-4 document, the second-best document within the NBA.
A lot of that’s as a result of return of star gamers, together with ahead Jayson Tatum, guard Jaylen Brown and level guard Jrue Vacation.
The largest shock this season has been level guard Payton Pritchard. Though he’s not a starter, he’s at present one of many workforce’s prime 5 scorers, averaging 16.4 factors per recreation. On prime of that, he averages 3.1 whole rebounds, 2.9 assists, and 1.1 steals per recreation.
It is a huge enchancment from final season, the place Pritchard averaged 9.6 factors, 3.2 whole rebounds, 3.4 assists and 0.5 steals.
Pritchard’s sudden offensive success caught NBA followers and analysts off guard. Nonetheless, ahead Sam Hauser says it did not shock him in any respect.
“I noticed this coming,” Hauser stated, in response to Zack Cox of the Boston Herald. “He is a particular participant, and he lastly, I assume, obtained his toes beneath him the place he simply has the chance and the power to indicate up and show himself to everybody, even when everybody everybody within the constructing already knew he was able to this stuff.
Anybody who adopted Pritchard to varsity would not be shocked by this sudden burst of manufacturing both. Throughout his junior yr, he was named a second-team All-Pac-12 and Pac-12 match excellent participant.
Nonetheless, his greatest faculty season got here throughout his senior yr, the place Pritchard averaged 20.5 factors, 5.5 assists, 4.3 whole rebounds, and 1.5 steals per recreation. He was first workforce All-Pac-12, a consensus first workforce All-American and the Pac-12 participant of the yr.
Pritchard additionally obtained the Bob Cousy Award, naming him the most effective collegiate level guard in 2020, and the Lute Olson Award, recognizing him as the most effective participant in males’s faculty basketball in 2020.
After skipping the 2019 NBA Draft, Pritchard was chosen within the 2020 NBA Draft by the Celtics with the twenty sixth general choose. In his first NBA season, he averaged 7.7 factors, 2.4 whole rebounds, 1.8 assists and 0.6 steals.
Now, Pritchard is an early favourite for NBA Sixth Man of the Yr. Finally, it was Miami Warmth head coach Erik Spoelstra who greatest defined Pritchard’s success.
“Everybody desires prompt gratification,” Spoelstra stated, in response to WEEI’s Justin Turpin. This man labored and labored yr after yr, and yearly he obtained higher… Abruptly he will get to this degree the place he is within the Sixth Man of the yr conversations.
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