Brad Stevens on the Celtics' drafting Aaron Nesmith, Peyton Pritchard

The Celtics had a clear need coming into draft night and they did their best to address their hole with their first two picks in the 2020 NBA Draft on Wednesday. With No. 14 and No. 26, the Celtics landed two of the more accomplished shooters available in Aaron Nesmith and Peyton Pritchard, addressing a weak spot off the bench for Boston for much of the past season.

“I think you’re always looking for shooting, you’re always looking for guys who can put the ball in the basket,” Brad Stevens said. “We were evaluating several guys across the draft that brought different strengths, that brought different things to the table.”

Nesmith shot 52 percent overall from 3 during an injury-shortened season at Vanderbilt that ultimately concluded with foot injury. However, many scouts have told BSJ that he was the best pure shooter on the board in this year’s draft.

“When 14 came out, we felt best about Aaron and Aaron, before he broke his foot this year, had a great year, early part of the season,” Stevens said. “The way he can run off screens and shoot the ball, the worker that he is, the amount of time he puts into his game, his size, which gives him some positional versatility as he becomes more comfortable with how we defend, will hopefully allow him to guard multiple positions. Those are all positives, but the shooting is his thing.”

Pritchard is one of the oldest first-round picks at age 22 but brings a kind of readiness that appealed to Stevens and the Celtics with training camp just days away.

“Payton is obviously a knockdown shooter as well that can do a lot of things with the basketball,” Stevens said. “So shooting is certainly important. It certainly is a high priority, but I wouldn’t say that everybody we were high on in this draft would be considered a great shooter, so we were more looking for what were the best fits at the time and we feel very good about the two picks in the first round and look forward to getting those guys here because they don’t get the benefit of a summer league and some nice preseason two-on-two before the season kicks off to get themselves ready. It’s going to be full steam ahead here soon.”

The goal for Boston with these moves was clearly to add more seasoned players that will be able to work their way into Stevens’ rotation right away within a bench full of youth.

“I think you're certainly hopeful that guys are able to do that sooner rather than later,” Stevens said of the picks. “I don’t think it’s fair to put on any of these guys to expect them to be playing in a high-level NBA game on December 22, which is, what, 35 days from now? However that is what we all push for. That will be what we all work hard for over the next however many weeks to get ready when we’re allowed to be in the gym. There’s a lot of restrictions in place once we get back to doing what we can in the next couple of weeks. But after that, we’ll try to expedite the curve as much as possible. But when you can put the ball in the basket, it certainly is a benefit. We’ve got good older players and good younger players, so we’ll see how that all pans out.”