Payton Pritchard’s Unusual Journey to 6th Man of the Year

2021 | Erik Drost | www.flickr.com/photos/edrost88/51687588991/

Payton Pritchard has had an intriguing five years to start his NBA career. After finishing a four-year college career at Oregon with a First Team All-America selection, he was drafted later than his college stats would suggest due to questions about his size and athleticism. He was able to establish himself as a contributor for the Celtics, yet found his role shrinking during the 2023 season, in large part because of the addition of Malcolm Brogdon to the Celtics guard rotation. Pritchard spoke with the Celtics front office about finding a trade for him to have an expanded role with another team. Instead, the Celtics chose to keep Pritchard over Brogdon, and traded Brogdon during the 2023 offseason, opting to use Pritchard to fill Brogdon’s off-the-bench role. Pritchard responded by becoming a key reserve for the 2024 championship team and then winning the 2025 6th Man of the Year Award, which is given to the best bench player in the league.

CSA was bullish about Pritchard’s prospects coming into the 2024-25 season.  Its award-winning prediction technology, RBP, predicted Prichard’s scoring output to rise from a career-high 9.6 PPG in 2023-24 to 15.5 PPG in 2024-25. Pritchard fell a bit short of this prediction, finishing the year at 14.3 PPG.  Nonetheless, RBP accurately revealed that Prichard had not yet reached his ceiling. One of the key drivers in Pritchard’s prediction was his rate of assisted 2-pointers. The inclusion of his assisted 2-pointer rate improved the prediction conviction by more than double the amount of any other part of his scoring profile. In his 2023-24 campaign, only 27.3% of his made 2-pointers were assisted. This put him in a tier with elite shot creators like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Brunson, DeMar DeRozan, and Cade Cunningham. RBP discovered that creating your own 2-point shot is a strong indicator for potential scoring increases year-to-year.

The players who are most relevant to predicting Pritchard’s scoring profile all showcase a unique aspect of his game. Near the top, there are prolific bench scorers such as Jordan Crawford and Reggie Jackson. Farther down the list, there are high-volume, high-efficiency three-point shooters such as Stephen Curry, Joe Ingles, and Damian Lillard. Pritchard’s combination of shot creation and three-point shooting ability should make him a force on the offensive end for years to come.