Sam Vecenie of The Athletic has PP as his captain of the Too Good For Summer League Team:
”Honestly, ranking Pritchard at No. 37 on my 2020 NBA Draft Board is one of the dumber things I’ve done logically in a while. I loved Pritchard in college. I have a Naismith Award vote and voted him as a clear finalist. He would have been my second-place vote if the ballot was a ranked-choice ballot. Simply put, he’s just gotten so much better each of the last three years, and it was obvious then that Pritchard was going to be an effective offensive NBA player. I let the worries I have about him defensively override what I knew what true about him offensively. Even if I do think the defensive concerns are still justified, that was just silly. He’s clearly going to be worthy of the first-round pick the Celtics used on him, and he has a chance to exceed that by a pretty sizable margin if his play continues.
Pritchard was the most effective player I saw at aummer league this year, which shouldn’t come as a total surprise given that he’s coming off of a season where he deservedly earned votes for the All-Rookie team. There was never a moment where he was hurried or rushed. His poise stood out to the utmost degree to the point that he almost looked bored while also trying to make dudes look ridiculous trying to defend his step-back game.
Three things really stood out. First, the range. Pritchard looked extremely comfortable shooting not just behind the NBA line, but shooting over five feet behind the NBA line. Any team that went under a ball-screen that got set even 30 feet away from the basket got punished. But honestly, we kind of knew he could do that. The improvements came in two places. Pritchard’s handle has taken another step forward. There’s another level of suddenness off the bounce. He uses deceleration well, then explodes into each move. On top of that, he can creatively string together multiple change-of-direction moves at full-speed now while maintaining total control.
More than that, though, there was not a more comfortable passer at summer league. Pritchard’s decision-making has long been terrific, but it was even better this summer. He posted an absurd 8.7 assists to 1.3 turnovers per in his three games. His live-dribble passing took a step forward, particularly with one hand. Having long been more of a jump-stop passer, Pritchard threw a couple of impressive one-handed live dribble looks with confidence that make me think he can run the show as a starting guard at some point for this Celtics core.
Everything about this was exactly the kind of performance you expect to see from a guy when you’re counting on him to take a leap the following season. And indeed, even with the Dennis Schröder signing, the Celtics need Pritchard to be useful this year, at the very least off the bench. They need secondary creation next to
Jayson Tatum and
Jaylen Brownfrom the backcourt. It’s easy to feel way better about that coming from Pritchard following a standout summer league performance.”
Immanuel Quickley, Payton Pritchard lead the 2021 Too Good For Summer League Team
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