Payton Pritchard is one of the rare NBA players who can hide in plain sight. To a non-NBA fan, he’s just some normal-sized guy sitting in a restaurant or walking down the street. He blends into the real world, unlike someone like Neemias Queta, whose size makes even the most out-of-touch person think ‘well, he has to be somebody.’
Pritchard is 6-foot-1, four inches taller than the average American male. But the NBA world is skewed, so 38-year-old Al Horford is ancient and Pritchard is tiny. Those are the rules.
What Pritchard has been able to do with those rules, though, has been impressive. He’s averaging 14 points per game off the bench, most of which come off three-pointers, but he’s usually good for a layup or two a game. He benefits from being on the floor with great teammates, but 38.4% of his makes are unassisted, which means he is creating his own shot fairly often.
On a championship team like the Celtics, an essentially 60/40 split between assisted and unassisted buckets for Pritchard seems surprising. A small guard on this kind of team is mostly expected to be a distributor and shooting outlet. That he is able to get shots all over the floor is a testament to his ability to create openings for himself where they don’t normally exist.
“If you're talking about scoring at all three levels, that's where he has the ability to do that,” Joe Mazzulla said. “He has the catch-and-shoot 3, but he can get a pick-and-roll 3 by creating space, whether it’s versus different coverages. When he goes into the paint, he has the ability to knock defenders off balance so he can shoot his pull-up and create layups.”
Pritchard has developed tricks that give him slivers of room to get shots off, and it all starts with his ability to do multiple things off the dribble. Pritchard is effective at attacking the basket, averaging about five drives per game. What he does off those drives varies, though.
“The biggest thing, I think, with the best players is keeping people off balance,” Pritchard told Boston Sports Journal. “If you cut off the drive fully, then I will retreat, and then you got to live with if I'm hitting that three ball, then your coach is gonna be pissed for allowing me to get it off. When you’re keeping the defender in like a 50-50 position, they might take away the 3, then I'm gonna do my little bump shot finish at the rim, take those points.”
The bump and finish is a Pritchard specialty, and a staple of the small guard with enough speed to attack the rim. Instead of shying away from size, Pritchard leans into it, getting a bump on his defender to push the opponent’s momentum one way while his goes the other.
This drive earlier this season against Chicago gives a nice, low-angle view of just how far Pritchard will go with the contact and his ability to stop and finish on a dime.
“It becomes second nature where I'm not even thinking about it, I just drive in and bump,” Pritchard told me. “Once I know I get them with a bump into the chest, I can get it up quick enough on the backboard without them blocking it. So I feel like it's just through repetition, and then eventually it just becomes second nature, knowing that this is a shot I can get to at any time.”
Repetition is the key to everything with Pritchard. He has famously spent his summers employing basketball players of all sizes for his workouts. He’s hired bigs, wings, and guards to defend him as he works plays over and over, taking the lessons he’s learned from watching players like Kemba Walker and Isaiah Thomas, and making their moves his own.
“I obviously take things from all the greats,” Pritchard said. “They were unbelievable at finishing down low. … You can learn from them, but you got to put it in your own way. Like, I don't finish the way they did, then they don't finish the way I did. I learned how they got there and then I just practiced how to do it my way.”
These drives make setting up his step-back possible. Again, Pritchard learned from one of the best, watching James Harden use the rules to his advantage so he can maximize how much space he’s creating. Instead of two steps, Pritchard can legally take four, because of how he handles the ball.
“It's allowed, because I don't pick up the ball,” Pritchard explained. “You could keep taking a step if the ball doesn't touch your other hand, because I could put it back down at any time.”
A player can take as many steps as he wants in between dribbles as long as he keeps the dribble alive, and in the NBA that doesn’t happen until “the gather.” Pritchard’s first two steps aren’t counted because the ball is still spinning in his hand. After those two steps, he could continue his dribble and attack the basket if he wanted. Once he touches the ball with his other hand, that is considered “the gather,” which ends his dribble and gives him two more steps.
“If I get enough separation where I can easily get a clean shot off, then that gives me the best chance of it going in. So that's kind of how I judge it,” Pritchard told Boston Sports Journal. “You see Steph (Curry) do it. He steps back, his eyes go to the rim, and the guy closes and then he goes.”
Sometimes he can even stack everything together, like this play against Dallas where he got to the rim, created space with the bump, kicked it out, and used the threat of the 3-pointer to drive again.
So Pritchard’s formula is simple enough. He’s a threat to drive, and he has the tricks to finish around the rim. That threat to drive allows him to set up a step back because the defender has to commit to stopping one or the other. If the defender cuts off his run to the rim, Pritchard can backtrack to the line. His understanding of the NBA rules allows him to decide mid-move whether (a) he has enough space to shoot and (b) if he doesn’t, whether continuing his drive or taking two more steps back is his best option. The extra step back means he can start at the elbow and end up at the 3-point line, or he can just step way out to nearly 30 feet and hoist from there.
And this is all well and good, except for the final element of all this: making the shot.
The NBA 3-point line is far away, and Pritchard is often a few steps behind that line. How does anyone, much less a 6-foot-1 guy, take four steps to get behind the line, stop his momentum, and then fire an on-target missile through the net?
“I think it's leg strength, and it's, especially if you're going backwards, I think it's the ability to get back on balance and not fade also backwards,” Pritchard said. “I can't shoot a back pedal, step back and fading off of it. It's too hard. … My best chance is to step back and then explode straight up, get on balance.”
Step-back 3-pointers might be the toughest shot in basketball. Every kid is taught to get their momentum going towards the rim, stop, and jump straight up. Taking four diagonal steps backwards and then launching a perfect parabola into an 18-inch wide target 26 feet away feels impossible. Pritchard’s effective field goal percentage on step-backs is 43% which is among the best in the league.
His ability to create space is incredible, and the amount of work he has put into making the shots he creates effective is even more impressive. A lot of guys Pritchard’s size struggle to find a regular role, but Pritchard has become a favorite for Sixth Man of the Year because he’s mastered these elements of the game.
“It’s really just taking what the defense gives you,” Pritchard said. “They’ll give you the answers. You just have to read what their bodies are doing.”