Boston Celtics: 1 stud and 1 dud from C’s valiant victory over Atlanta

Boston Celtics dud: Payton Pritchard

We at the Houdini truly hate to say anything bad about second-year baller, Payton Pritchard, as he’s one of our favorite players on this Boston Celtics squad.

That said, sometimes you’ve got to call a spade a spade and, in Tuesday’s matchup against Atlanta, the guard couldn’t find a way to really make an impact despite getting ample playing time due to Jaylen Brown’s early exit.

Heading into this contest, we were praising Pritchard for how effective he’s proven to be when given extended run on the hardwood this year, particularly when receiving 18 or more minutes where he had been boasting impressive averages of 13.3 points, 3.7 assists, and 3.5 rebounds on a stellar 50 percent shooting from the floor and 44 percent shooting from deep.

In 19 minutes received against the Hawks, unfortunately, the 24-year-old was incapable of playing up to such a level, as he struggled mightily in virtually every aspect of the game.

By the time the final buzzer sounded, the point guard had only managed to knock down one of his four shot attempts (though, admittedly, it was a rather impressive pull back trey) to have him finish with just three points to go along with three assists and a turnover.

Now look, was this outing for Payton Pritchard something C’s fans should be extremely worried about? No.

Still, seeing him play this poorly with the number of minutes that he received was a bit disheartening.

Because of this, we believe he deserves to receive the moniker of “dud” from this game.