Celtics notebook: Pritchard's minutes, Tatum for MVP, Brown addresses Kyrie Irving situation

We knew this conversation was going to be part of this season. 

Looking up and down the roster, it was hard to envision exactly how Payton Pritchard was going to get a consistent opportunity on this Celtics team. His heart makes you want to play him 30 minutes a game, but there are obviously more skilled and versatile players ahead of him who deserve minutes. 

There's just no way he should play ahead of Derrick White, Malcolm, Brogdon, and Marcus Smart. 

However, Brogdon and Smart were never going to play 82 games. Brogdon has already missed a few, and Smart is always a risk to miss a handful here or there. 

Whenever that happens, Pritchard looms as a luxury Joe Mazzulla can count on to not only fill the minutes, but to do so well. 

“I just think Payton’s a guy that you know what you’re getting every single time you put him in the game,” Mazzulla said after the Celtics win over OKC. “I felt like we needed a lift and I thought he did a great job on both ends of the floor giving us that.”

Mazzulla turned to Pritchard early in the third quarter searching for that lift, and it finally came in Pritchard’s second stint of the second half. He’s basically a flint you keep striking looking for a spark to light your tinder. 

It’s a testament to his preparedness. 

“Working, going in, doubles, lifting every day still, playing every day, going back in at night,” Pritchard recently said of staying ready. “I live this. Basketball, I love this stuff. So no matter what I’m gonna stay ready and whatever I get I’m gonna go out there and give it all.”

It’s what Brad Stevens used to preach. Controlling the controllables. You can’t predict what’s going to happen in five minutes, five hours, or five days. No matter how bleak things might look in a certain situation, there's a potentially radical change around the corner. 

Louis Pasteur said “fortune favors the prepared mind.” By staying prepared, Pritchard checks in with confidence instead of confused mania. 

“We all have seen it and I think it speaks about the professional that he is when he gets his moments,” Smart said. “He doesn't let the circumstances that he's in affect him and that's what it's all about. Because on any given night, you never know, it might be your turn.”

And while the tone of all the words written about Pritchard tend to take on a “rah rah” feel that makes us all happy for the underdog, Smart’s advice shifts to the bigger picture of NBA reality.

“I'm just letting him know it's a business,” Smart said. “As much as you probably wanna be here, just understand that there's 29 other teams that are watching you, you know what I'm saying? They see, they understand the team we have, so just keep playing, whether your time is here or somewhere else. But you don't want to go out there and stink it up and not be professional because you're upset about the circumstance you're in, cause it's gonna hurt you in the long run.”

It’s good advice, no matter how jarring it might be to fans. Pritchard has to prepare for the reality, and in all honesty, near certainty, that his future lies elsewhere. Pritchard is a fun player and the kind of guy fans love, but he’s also the kind of guy who will likely have to piece together an NBA career in multiple cities. 

But for now, Pritchard is in Boston, and the Celtics need him. However long Brogdon is out (there’s optimism he can rejoin the team on this road trip), Pritchard will get a chance. As long as there's some fragility ahead of him in the depth chart, he will be a valuable piece behind the glass for whenever it needs to be broken. 

"I'm just going to stay professional, show up every day, work and control what I can control,” Pritchard said. “That's all I can do.”

FOURTH QUARTER DEFENSE

The Celtics enter their night against the Atlanta Hawks in the bottom third of the NBA defensively, but #6 overall in the fourth quarter. 

The positive spin: Wow they're really stepping up their game in the fourth quarter. 

The negative spin: They clearly have the ability to defend, why not do it earlier? 

Wherever the truth lies (I lean towards the latter … try defending that way in the first quarter), the Celtics are generally closing games well. 

“I think it's just the guys growing.” Mazzulla recently said. “I think it's the guys understanding what we're trying to do with our organization, with our game management, the shots that we're trying to get, the spacing that we're trying to have, and the matchups that we're trying to attack. And so our guys are really smart, and they do a great job putting themselves in situations to make the right play and to attack the right matchup.”

The Celtics focus this season has been heavily on the offense, which made sense based on last year’s results. Now that they're cooking, and with Robert Williams’ impending return, a refocused effort on a more consistent defense has to be a priority. 

JAYSON TATUM’S TECH RESCINDED

Tatum got the worst technical foul you’ll ever see in Monday night’s game. 

“I think I just missed the layup and I just committed a foul,” Tatum explained. “I was like -- anybody in the arena, anybody watching the game could have seen it. I was frustrated with myself. I didn't say anything. I didn't look at him. So you know after the game, you can just laugh it off when you see it.”

The league laughed it off too. Well, they might or might not have been laughing, I don’t know for sure, that just seemed like a good transition into telling you the league rescinded that tech. So no fine, either.

TATUM FOR MVP 

Betonline put out new odds this week and Tatum is the betting favorite for NBA MVP right now:

• Jayson Tatum: 3/1

• Giannis Antetokounmpo: 13/4

• Luka Doncic: 13/4

• Steph Curry: 10/1

• Ja Morant: 12/1

• Joel Embiid: 12/1

“I mean, it's always been a dream of mine,” Tatum said. “And it's like an honor to even be mentioned -- the thought of, the idea of me winning MVP.”

But Tatum says the notion that he’s gunning for MVP is wrong. 

“That was not like a goal of mine coming into the season. I wanted to play at a MVP level, meaning that playing great basketball, being efficient, and being on one of the best teams,” he said. “My goal, and I've said it all summer, preseason, was to get back to the Finals and not have that feeling again. So along the way, if we win enough games and I play well enough and I'm able to win that, you know, obviously that's a dream come true. But for me, I didn't say one time this summer ‘I want to win MVP.’ I just more so want to play at that level and affect the game on both ends, night in and night out, and do what I can to help us win games.”

What Tatum is doing right now is nothing short of amazing. There's a real reason why he’s at the top of those odds, and it’s because he’s getting to the rim at will, drawing fouls at the best rate of his career, and playing great defense on the other end. 

The old joke used to be that he was doing all this great stuff at only 19, but we can update this to ‘he’s only 24,’ because he’s hit an MVP level stride years before he’s actually in his physical prime. 

“I do feel better each year than I did the previous year. I think that my numbers kind of show that,” Tatum said. “I think I'm just more experienced. The more games I play, the better you get, so I feel like I should be better this season than I was last year. 

“Making it to the Finals was a learning experience. I think just my eagerness and competitiveness to always want to get better. Prime? I don’t know. That’s always different, I guess, with each person. I feel like I can still get a lot better, so I’ve still got a ways to go, and I guess that’s a good thing.”

GRANT WILLIAMS GRADUATES TO LOB-CATCHER

Last season, Tatum had Williams in position to catch an alley oop, but instead he took the ball in himself. Williams gave a demonstrative, yet playful, “wow” on the court. Afterwards, Tatum said this: 

Well, against Detroit, Tatum actually threw the lob, and Williams finished it. Seems like Grant is growing up. 

“Yeah, I know I said I would never, but everybody in this room has said something and backtracked before, everybody changed their mind,” Tatum joked. “I trust Grant a lot more. Every day, it’s like a building block. He adds a stone of trust to that wall. So we’re getting there.”

JAYLEN BROWN DISCUSSES KYRIE IRVING SITUATION

Brown tweeted that Joe Tsai’s comments about Kyrie Irving’s return to the Nets was alarming: 

“He didn't say that the organization was working together to get Kyrie back on the floor. He said that he had more work to do,” Brown said. “Our society has more work to do, including Joe Tsai. It's 2022, it takes 10 minutes of time to see who these business owners, corporations etc., who they're associated with and who they're doing business with, who they're affiliated with.”

The point Brown seemed to be making wasn’t so much an endorsement of Irving’s actions, as it has been portrayed by some, but a call of hypocrisy by the people determining Irving’s future. 

“I’m vice president of the union, and it’s part of my job to protect our players legally,” he said. “And to see (Nike founder) Phil Knight first come out and condemn Kyrie, and also see (Nets owner) Joe Tsai say he has more work to do, I think it's time for a larger conversation. And Adam came out and said in a statement that he doesn't believe Kyrie Irving is anti semitic, and yet he's still suspended indefinitely. So those are my thoughts.”

Nike has been under constant scrutiny for the labor practices behind how their shoes are made and manufactured. And in a recent ESPN report, Tsai “partners with companies blacklisted by the U.S. government for supporting a ‘campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention and high-tech surveillance’ through state-of-the-art racial profiling.” 

“Our society has more work to do, including Joe Tsai,” Brown said. “So I’m curious to know what that is, what that means, and everybody is tuned in and watching the situation because this is our league. We all are basketball players, but we all are human beings as well. So I’m looking forward to seeing the union and the NBA figure out what the next steps are.”

For now, Irving is still suspended. It all stems from him sharing a link on social media to a movie containing several antisemitic tropes, including suggestions that the Holocost didn’t happen. When given multiple chances to distance himself from the movie and apologize, Irving refused, leading to his suspension. He posted an apology to instagram after his suspension, disavowing the antisemitic messages of the film. He has also met with Tsai and Commissioner Adam Silver, both of who say they're satisfied Irving himself isn’t antisemitic.  

“I think it’s uncharted territory. I think it’s no distinction between what somebody says vs. what somebody posts, and I guess that’s what they are trying to figure out,” Brown said. “The terms that the Brooklyn Nets instituted for his return, I voiced my discomfort. Some of our players, some people in the media voiced some of their discomfort with that.”

The line for Brown and the union doesn't appear to be defending Irving’s initial actions. Their concern is for the unprecedented parameters of meetings, donations, and other actions they feel are excessive and vague; items that make Tsai judge and jury to determine Irving’s fitness to play. 

There hasn’t been anyone who argued that Irving’s actions weren’t inappropriate. What Brown and union seem to want is more definition to the response. 

“Obviously, he — it came off as insensitive to a lot of people, but Adam came out with a statement, he doesn’t believe Kyrie Irving is antisemitic, Joe Tsai came out and said a statement that they don’t believe he is antisemitic,” Brown said. “But the comment that Joe Tsai made which I feel like bothered a lot of people was like, ‘He has more work to do.’ Like, what does that mean?”