Payton Pritchard is the NBA’s unlikeliest isolation star. Last season, his 1.11 points per isolation possession ranked third in the league, behind only Luka Doncic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Now the Boston Celtics need him to carry a larger share of the offense after Jaylen Brown was traded to Philadelphia in the offseason.
Pritchard was at the Celtics bench in late April when he felt a tap on his shoulder. Boston led Game 3 of the first-round playoff series in Philadelphia, 103-98, with just over a minute to play. The man behind him was even shorter than Pritchard, and he was dressed entirely in black, with a blinged-out Roman numeral III hanging from his neck. It was Allen Iverson.
“You’re the coldest white boy I’ve ever seen,” Iverson told him, Pritchard remembers.
Pritchard’s thoughts raced. First, he wondered how Iverson had ended up beside him. Then he thought, “That’s AI.” Finally, he decided he had to turn up the intensity.
Pritchard had already made five 3-pointers that night. With the Celtics protecting a narrow lead, he pulled up for a step-back 26-footer as the buzzer sounded to end the shot clock, and play-by-play announcer Eric Collins yelled, “He’s a killer.”
Pritchard saved his biggest performance for Game 4, two days later. He hit a one-legged, buzzer-beating 3 at the end of the first quarter. He scored 18 points in the first half, more than the Celtics’ starting five combined, which totaled 24. He finished with a career-high 32 points in both the regular season and the playoffs.
Pritchard produced all of this from the bench, which is where he has built his reputation. He won Sixth Man of the Year two seasons ago. But he has also started, most recently for 50 games last season, after Jrue Holiday left for Portland and Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles. Pritchard has long been known for his deep 3-pointers, his crossover handles and his rise from a late first-round pick. Still, he has rarely looked like the player people expected him to be, let alone a star for one of the league’s top teams.
“He’s 6-1 soaking wet,” Celtics assistant coach Sam Cassell says. The description is not quite accurate, yet somehow it fits perfectly.
The Gym Where the Work Happens
Pritchard’s approach to his craft is unusual. For years, he has held offseason workouts in anonymous gyms that, according to people close to him, resemble the training routines of some of the sport’s most famous one-name guards. He invites only players who are willing to meet him, and to defend him, at his level.
On a June morning, Pritchard walked into a high school gym on the southeastern tip of Cape Cod at 6:45 a.m. He had arrived 10 minutes earlier and waited outside while his trainer, Michael Soares, called a staffer to unlock the double doors. The gym had no air-conditioning.
“There’s just something about a humid gym,” Pritchard says.
The heat is nothing new to him. A few years ago, a heat wave hit West Linn, Oregon, where he grew up. Temperatures outside reached 115 degrees and climbed to 120 inside his old high school gym, where he was working out. He brought extra towels that day because the ball was sweating too.
Pritchard prefers gyms like these because the conditions make the work harder. He recruits Division II and Division III players, international players and hometown friends to join him in them. He pays their gas to drive from Boston to the Cape or covers their flights from across the country or overseas. Pritchard believes these players are hungry because they are not established professionals, and he relies on them for feisty, relentless one-on-one defense.
The routine rarely changes. Pritchard bumps his defender, creates space and shoots. He beats his defender, reaches his spot and shoots. He reacts when the defender chases him, then drives to the basket when that defender falls too far behind.
Bruce Saintilus, a recent Division III Clark University player who defended Pritchard that summer, once believed he had forced Pritchard into a bad angle. Saintilus ran past the basket, so he did not see Pritchard’s awkward layup go in. He called out to Soares, “Did that really go in?”
Pritchard repeats these sessions about three times a week throughout the summer. Each session lasts close to two hours and includes about 150 possessions. He moves around the court through the block, the elbow, the other elbow, the 3-point line, the corner, the wing, the high slot, the middle and the opposite slot, facing a rotating group of defenders. The defenders get breaks; Pritchard does not. If he shoots under 60 percent for the day, his defenders eat like kings at Chipotle and then send him the bill.
Pritchard considers the cost worth it. The summer gives him thousands of live looks against one defender at a time, and he stores every one of them in his mental archive.
“My approach is probably a little different,” he concedes.
Dave Lewin, the Celtics’ assistant general manager, says the approach resembles Kyrie Irving’s. Lewin spent the early part of his career in Cleveland, where he often found Irving playing one-on-one whenever he walked into the facility at night.
“They’re obviously different,” Lewin says. “But in their approach to playing one-on-one as a form of skill development, those are the two players I’ve seen do it the most.”
Where the Obsession Started
Pritchard’s fixation began in high school. He trained at ClubSport, a gym near West Linn. His high school coach, Eric Viuhkola, called him “unassuming-looking.” Viuhkola added, “It wasn’t like LeBron James coming through the gym.”
Still, a local gymgoer noticed him. Steve Blake was nearing the end of a 13-year NBA career when he formed a bond with the teenager. Before Pritchard’s sophomore year, Blake picked him up three or four times a week for the entire summer to play one-on-one. Pritchard lost game after game.
“It just destroyed me,” he says. “Every day.”
He set a goal to beat Blake by the end of the summer. Brian Scalabrine, who became one of Boston’s most beloved bench players in the early 2000s and now works as the team’s TV analyst, calls the idea delusional. “Thinking a 15-year-old kid is going to turn around and beat an NBA player,” he says.
Pritchard never beat Blake that summer, but he kept coming back. His answer, at least in basketball, was always more.
Another day, he arrived at Viuhkola’s practice with his hands bandaged. His father, Terry, had bought him a pair of weighted balls to sharpen his ballhandling. Pritchard dribbled them for so long that they rubbed his skin raw.
If he was not bleeding, literally or figuratively, he thought he was not trying hard enough.
His high school teammate Brooks DeBisschop once saw Pritchard twisting his body at his desk during class. Pritchard explained that he was working on his hip mobility. He used lunch periods for plyometrics, meeting Terry at the high school track during the only free time he had. He also attended early-morning and after-school practices. He believed that Russell Westbrook had made a huge leap between his sophomore and junior years, and he wanted to build his athleticism to do the same.
Pritchard insists there is a straight line from those battles with Blake, the hip stretches in class and the lunchtime workouts to his current focus on one-on-one play. He views those sessions as a way to examine his game closely.
The Science of Sleight of Body
In Game 5 of last season’s series against the Sixers, early in the second quarter, Pritchard drove hard to the basket and veer-stepped past Joel Embiid, who is 11 inches taller and 75 pounds heavier. Pritchard put his shoulder into the center, and Embiid flew back five or six feet.
“He’s knocking Joel Embiid off his spot to get a layup,” Scalabrine says. “There’s probably a good chance LeBron’s not knocking Embiid off his spot to get a layup.”
Soares says Pritchard’s strength is not the whole explanation. “People always say Payton might be one of the strongest pound-for-pound players,” Soares says. “But really, he just knows how to use other players’ bodies against them. He truly knows when to utilize his opponents’ inertia or speed or direction against them.”
Pritchard estimates he has run this kind of drill thousands of times, possibly tens of thousands. He has worked against European pros, semipros and players who practice for a living. They defend him, give him looks and push him harder each time until the move settles into his muscles.
“He’s an absolute outlier for what he does,” Scalabrine says.
The numbers support that view. Last season, 57 players attempted at least 200 shots in the key, which is the nonrestricted area. Pritchard ranked third with 56 percent shooting, behind only Nikola Jokic and Kevin Durant. He also made 86 field goals with four or fewer seconds left on the shot clock, 12 more than Durant. His 51.6 percent effective field goal rate on those shots trailed only Jalen Brunson’s 51.7 percent among players with at least 100 attempts, according to ESPN Research.
“Payton’s able to take something that shouldn’t be possible, and he can work himself through it to make it not only possible that he can survive, but he can actually thrive,” Scalabrine says. “And the only thing you can point to is this: He is a savage, an absolute savage, when it comes to the way he works.”
The drive does not stop when the season begins. After Celtics practices, Pritchard often seeks out teammates for one-on-one games. “He’s like a lost puppy,” Scalabrine says. “‘Oh, you guys wanna play ones? You wanna play ones? Anybody want to play ones?'”
Last season, rookie John Tonje was leaving the Auerbach Center after a lift when an assistant coach called him back to guard Pritchard. Tonje was excited for the challenge.
Then Pritchard made 17 shots in a row.
“The dude did not miss,” Tonje says. “It was embarrassing.”
Nana Foulland, one of the Celtics’ player enhancement coaches, counted off each make. Tonje pressured Pritchard, and Pritchard found an angle and got past him. Tonje cut him off, but Pritchard had already moved to his next option and pulled up for a contested fadeaway. Head coach Joe Mazzulla watched from half court with his arms folded, the closest he comes to showing excitement.
Eventually, Tonje accepted the outcome. Unless he blocked the shot or stole the ball, Pritchard’s shot was going in.
“That was my welcome to the league moment,” Tonje says. “There was just no missing.”
Chasing the Next Level
Back in Cape Cod, Pritchard’s shirt, light gray when he arrived at dawn, was nearly black with sweat within an hour. He took a short break and hunched over a laptop with trainer Rocky DeAndrade to study Jalen Brunson’s film. They analyzed how the 6-foot-2 Brunson became one of the best players in the world at drawing fouls.
Brunson had just been named NBA Finals MVP, and many players want to emulate him. Pritchard, who is small, crafty, dominant in isolation and no longer playing alongside Brown, may be uniquely positioned to become the next Brunson, or at least something close.
“If he has a season we think he could have, it may be perceived as a breakout,” Lewin says. “But I think we’ll view it as a continuation of the things he’s done well in the past, when given the opportunity. Some of the really promising isolation development and midrange shooting that he had last year, with more of the 3-point shooting success he had earlier in his career.”
The Celtics need someone to help Tatum fill the void Brown left. Paul George, who is 36 and past his offensive peak, has joined the team. Even if several players share the load, Pritchard will likely have to lead that effort.
Early results this season have been modest. Still, people close to the team are optimistic. “I think he’s going to average, like, over 22 points a game,” Scalabrine says. The league seems to share that confidence. In this year’s NBA GM survey, released before the 2026-27 season, Pritchard, a former top-26 pick now entering his seventh year, received votes for breakout player candidates alongside several recent top-10 picks.
“We’ve asked him to be more for us every single year,” Mazzulla says. “He has the ability to take on whatever the team needs at that particular time, you know?”
The Celtics are not asking Pritchard to become a No. 1 option. They already have one in Tatum. Still, becoming a Brunson-adjacent scorer would be a heavy task.
Pritchard thrives on doubt. In high school, he kept a burn book listing his critics and their complaints: too short, too unathletic, too slow. His own father earned a spot in it for suggesting Pritchard consider some Ivy League programs during recruiting.
A scout once texted one of Pritchard’s college coaches during the draft process with a bleak assessment. “Don’t think he’s gonna be an NBA player,” the scout wrote. “Maybe a good overseas player, at best a kid named Kevin Pangos.” Pritchard has never forgotten it. He has nothing against Pangos, the former Gonzaga standout and two-time All-EuroLeague honoree, but he says he was chasing something bigger.
“There’s always doubters,” Pritchard says. “There’s always the next step that people think you can’t get to. So you search for that and you find it.”
A Coach Who Once Pushed Too Hard
On the last day of September, with training camp two days old, Pritchard and Mazzulla huddled on the practice court. Mazzulla waved his hands and at one point elbowed Pritchard, perhaps to demonstrate a play. Then Mazzulla broke into a genuine smile, a rare sight for a coach known for his seriousness.
Mazzulla likes Pritchard, and he wants to count on him. “I’ll always bet on Payton,” Mazzulla says.
The relationship was not always this warm. When Mazzulla was still an assistant, he loved playing 5-on-5 and once shared a scrimmage with Pritchard. The game turned testy, and Mazzulla spoke bluntly. “You don’t make people better,” he told Pritchard.
Pritchard bristled. He had always worked himself to exhaustion. Yet his drive to outwork and outlast everyone was both his greatest strength and his biggest flaw.
Zack Gonzales, a former graduate assistant at Oregon, watched Pritchard as an upperclassman push a freshman guard day after day. “Payton’s goal every day was to make him cry,” Gonzales says. “He was like, ‘I’m gonna kill him.'”
Mazzulla was essentially warning Pritchard that he was repeating that pattern. In his drive to outdo everyone, Pritchard had forgotten to bring his teammates along.
Age and experience have softened those edges. Pritchard later sent an olive branch to Mazzulla, and he now has a gentler approach. He had hoped to host the newest Celtics at his Cape Cod workout bootcamp, though the timing did not work out. He is also less inclined to be ruthless, although Tonje might disagree.
“A menace,” said Mike Conley, who joined the Celtics this season, early in training camp. “He’s an absolute crazy person when it comes to trying to improve his game.”
That relentless drive brought Pritchard to his current position. He is a bench star and occasional starter, a heave specialist and one of the league’s most unexpected isolation players. He also signed a $44.2 million, two-year extension that will keep him in Boston through 2030, making him a cornerstone of what comes next.
“I can’t wake up,” he says, “and be Wemby.”