The Boston Celtics have been one of the best teams in the NBA for the last two years, highlighted by their 2024 NBA Championship run. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown spearheaded the Celtics’ championship, but their supporting cast was just as important in their successes. Payton Pritchard was a huge part of that.
Over the years, Pritchard’s dedication to the game of basketball has been well-documented, as have his insane, insane tactics to constantly stay ready and keep himself in amazing shape. Jay King of The Athletic recently wrote an article further detailing these processes, and one of the tidbits stands out among the rest.
And Pritchard basically called out the rest of the NBA.
Payton Pritchard thinks it's 'soft' to worry about shooting percentages
See, in the NBA Finals, Pritchard hit one of the most memorable shots in recent memory. In Game 5, he nailed a half-court heave to beat the half-time buzzer, and TD Garden went berserk.
Pritchard has quickly become known for those types of heaves, but some players around the league aren’t even willing to take them. They’re too worried about their shooting percentages and numbers.
In Pritchard’s eyes, that’s a terrible mindset to have.
“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.”
Effectively, Pritchard just called out everyone in the NBA who refuses to take those types of shots. It’s an indirect callout in the sense that he didn’t name-drop anyone, but calling an entire subsect of the league ‘soft’ is about as direct of a callout as one can make.
So many guys around the league are worried about what their percentage ties will look like when they go to leverage their value with teams in contract negotiations. But Pritchard just wants to see his team win, and if taking a half-court heave can help with that (which it clearly can), then he’s willing to do it.
In the article, King also detailed Pritchard’s incredible summer workout routines that involve him flying out friends and past teammates to play him in one-on-one situations.
His commitment to improving and doing whatever it takes to help his team win goes to a level beyond even what the normal NBA player is willing to do to improve.
For his entire life, people have doubted Pritchard’s ability to make it in the NBA, and he’s committed to proving them wrong every single day.