{"id":407735,"date":"2025-11-13T11:30:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T11:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/407735\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T11:30:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T11:30:13","slug":"how-payton-pritchard-got-his-mojo-back-vs-memphis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/407735\/","title":{"rendered":"How Payton Pritchard got his mojo back vs. Memphis"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Celtics returned from Philadelphia early Wednesday morning, Payton Pritchard was stewing.<\/p>\n

He had just played his worst game of the young season: five points, three assists, three rebounds in 31 minutes in a 102-100 loss to the 76ers<\/a>. He\u2019d also managed just five points two nights earlier in a win at Orlando.<\/p>\n

Over those two games, Pritchard took 17 shots and made just four of them. Nine of his 11 3-pointers missed their target, exacerbating a problem<\/a> that\u2019s persisted for Sixth Man of the Year-turned-Celtics starter since the season began last month.<\/p>\n

The misses began wearing on his psyche. He fell into \u201ca funk, mentally.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very disappointed with myself these past two games,\u201d Pritchard said. \u201cKind of down in the dumps a little bit. Just overthinking the last two games. Every play. Didn\u2019t feel like myself at all. Going home last night, I woke up this morning just hungry to attack this game and get back into the flow, get back into the rhythm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before Boston welcomed the Grizzlies to TD Garden on the second night of a back-to-back, Pritchard wanted to make a change. But not to his shot, his pregame warmup or his routine.<\/p>\n

He found the spark he was looking for in a barber\u2019s chair.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got a haircut this morning,\u201d Pritchard said. \u201cSometimes, you\u2019ve got to go back to those things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hours later, the freshly buzzed Boston guard got off the schneid with a 24-point, nine-assist, six-rebound showing as his team steamrolled Memphis 131-95<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Playing with an increased emphasis on pushing the pace, Pritchard shot 8-for-16 from the field and 5-for-10 from three. Just before halftime, he ran the length of the floor for a fast-break layup that put Boston ahead 67-46. The Celtics outscored the visiting Grizz by 42 points across his 30 minutes \u2014 the best plus\/minus of the 27-year-old\u2019s career.<\/p>\n

As he put it: \u201cIt was more like me tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last two games, it was just a lot of overthinking,\u201d Pritchard said. \u201cIt was like, \u2018Is this the right shot? Is this the right pass? Is this the right time to drive it?\u2019 instead of just playing with instinct. And I\u2019m sure everybody saw it. People that I know that are close to me, obviously, were telling me about it, just that I didn\u2019t look like myself and I didn\u2019t feel like myself. So I just was motivated to come out here tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PaytonPayton Pritchard (11) of the Boston Celtics gets the fans going as Neemias Queta looks on during the first half during an easy win over Washington at the TD Garden. (Photo By Matt Stone\/Boston Herald)<\/p>\n

Consecutive duds aren\u2019t common for Pritchard, who was able to stay reasonably productive over the first two-plus weeks of the season despite shooting far below his usual standard from beyond the arc. He scored five or fewer points in back-to-back games just twice last season.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s no stranger to a slump, though. After Wednesday\u2019s win, he recalled one particularly nasty one from early in the 2023-24 season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually have gone through it a lot,\u201d Pritchard said. \u201cAnd to be honest, when I go through them is usually when I kind of break through and get a little bit better. I went through it in college, and I\u2019ve gone through the pros a lot. I don\u2019t know if you guys remember, but my fourth year, when I started playing again after I just signed a new contract, I think I went through a five-game stretch where I didn\u2019t hit a three or even have a bucket. I think I went five games straight without scoring, and people started questioning whether I was worth the contract, or should I even be playing?\u201d<\/p>\n

Pritchard\u2019s memory of that frustrating stretch was only slightly inaccurate. Over the first seven games of his fourth pro season, he had four nights with zero made field goals and two others with one.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really down that time,\u201d Pritchard continued. \u201cBut then getting through it, once I got through it, I started to get better and better and better. So there\u2019s going to be low points, and it\u2019s just, don\u2019t let it break you. You just grow from it, learn from it and get better from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Celtics hope Wednesday\u2019s victory was a sign of things to come. Though they were facing a scuffling opponent (Memphis had lost six of its last seven) that was missing two starters (Ja Morant and Zach Edey), it was the best collective performance of the season by Jaylen Brown, Derrick White and Pritchard \u2014 the three headliners of Boston\u2019s new-look roster.<\/p>\n

The trio went 22-for-42 from the field (52.4%) and 10-for-21 from deep (47.6%) in the lopsided win, with White, like Pritchard, looking much more like the top-tier outside shooter he was last season. He came in shooting 28.0% from three, slightly above Pritchard\u2019s 25.6% eyesore. Both were above 38% a year ago, when both broke the previous franchise record for made 3-pointers in a season.<\/p>\n

Their improvements, combined with Brown\u2019s steady scoring, helped the Celtics make a season-best 41.2% of their 3-pointers and post their second-highest point total of the season. They\u2019re 4-0 thus far when they shoot better than 36% from three and 2-7 when they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes it\u2019s tough because everybody\u2019s talking to you about it,\u201d said White, who finished with 20 points, five rebounds, four assists, two steals and one block in 26 minutes. \u201cEverybody\u2019s like, \u2018Keep trying, keep shooting, keep, like, we believe in you.\u2019 You just hear that from every person. So you kind of sometimes want to just give them some space and let them process it his own way. Everybody kind of has their own way of getting through slumps and getting through tough times. And, I mean, (Pritchard) knows we\u2019ve got the ultimate amount of trust in him that this is just a little slump, and that is we keep getting those looks that he\u2019s been getting, that will start turning for us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Celtics returned from Philadelphia early Wednesday morning, Payton Pritchard was stewing. He had just played his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3795],"tags":[7,75,52562,1243,294,293,177,4070,6,405,61602],"class_list":{"0":"post-407735","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-memphis-grizzlies","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-boston-celtics","10":"tag-celtics-grizzlies","11":"tag-derrick-white","12":"tag-grizzlies","13":"tag-memphis","14":"tag-memphis-grizzlies","15":"tag-memphisgrizzlies","16":"tag-nba","17":"tag-payton-pritchard","18":"tag-payton-pritchard-celtics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115542165234870312","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}