Payton Pritchard says he would play 1v1 against NBA point guard Steve Blake every day during the summer after his sophomore year of high school: “I never won a game… He kind of admired how hard I work, he saw potential in me.”

27 comments

  2. Steve Blake to highschool Pritchard: “I’m closer to LeBron than you are to me!”

  3. Kinda crazy that this is coming out after Reaves said he’d 1v1 Joe Ingles in high school too. Glad it worked out for these boys

  12. Maryland legend Steve Blake! We overlapped at Maryland so I’d see him around campus once in a while. Seemed like a good dude, always rooted for him and proud of the career he was able to put together in the league.

  14. Was sure this story was gonna end with him saying Steve Blake swung on him the first time he won 😂

  17. Steve Blake wouldn’t hesitate to throw the first punch in a fist punch. He was THAT kind of dawg. Loved his toughness.

  18. At Club Sport (Bay Club) in Tualatin Oregon they’d be playing all the time. I feel like Payton was about 15-16. They ran 5v5 pickups sometimes too and I blocked the fuck outta Steve Blake once. Core memory. Martell Webster on the other hand absolutely bodied and posterized me like 8 times.

  19. I used to hang out in the same crew as Steve Blake. He used to be a piece of shit. He’s not anymore. I’m not anymore. Glass House. White Ferrari. Live for New Year’s Eve. Sloppy steaks at Truffoni’s. Big rare cut of meat with water dumped all over it, water splashing around the table, makes the night SO MUCH more fun. After the club go to Truffoni’s for sloppy steaks. They’d say; ‘no sloppy steaks’ but they can’t stop you from ordering a steak and a glass of water, before you knew it we were dumping that water on those steaks! The waiters were coming to try and snatch em up, we had to eat as fast as we could! Ohhh I miss those nights… I *was* a piece of shit though.

  20. Steve Blake also would come out to pick up ball every now and then at the gym where I used to work. It was supposed to be 18+ only and sometimes guys like Martell Webster, Channing Frye, Salim Stoudemire, Steve Bakel used to come and play sometimes in the summer too. PP would play with us from the time he was like 14 or 15, was probably 5’3 or something, and wouldn’t just hold his own but actually get picked above guys who were 20 and in great shape. Was crazy!

  24. In the early 90s so many people around Oregon had a story about playing 1v1 against Gary Payton and scoring when he was an OSU student. All lies but it was weird how frequently I heard the same one.

  26. He mentioned 1 on 1 full court. One summer I played a guy that was a few years older than me and it was a crazy workout

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