FORMER DUCK PRITCHARD HAS ‘A LITTLE DOG IN HIM’
The three old teammates — veterans of the 2017 Final Four — convened on the University of Oregon campus last fall. Dillon Brooks had matured into one of the toughest young twoway forwards in the NBA with Memphis. Chris Boucher was about to sign a new contact with Toronto and had just put up 24 points in a playoff game against the Celtics in the Orlando bubble.
And Payton Pritchard was getting ready for the NBA draft. Four years earlier they had rolled through the Pac-12 and into the Final Four, where Pritchard was the only freshman starter in the four-team field. And the bulldog nature that drove him to beat out a junior veteran for the starting job now had him attacking a pair of quality NBA defenders.
He drove with a handle that was now a thing of beauty, and, as always, he didn’t back up.
“His handle was like AI,” recalled Brooks.
“We were playing ones — me, Chris Boucher and Payton — and he was torching us. He was literally torching with pullups, 3s, and he was just super-confident. Defense was getting better, and that’s when I knew he took the next step trying to be an NBA player, trying to be that guy for Oregon in his last year.”
Pritchard always had a quick release, and it didn’t bother him when Brooks muscled in, or the 6-foot-10 Boucher extended to contest a shot.
“Takes a lot of work to hit a shot like that,” said Brooks. “A lot of work ethic, most of those shots are not open shots, and it takes a lot for a player to really work on his game diligently, and he does that at a high rate.
“Always had the quick handle to get into that shot.” Boucher and Brooks were both fascinated by where this was going. Pritchard was about to become the fifth member of that 2016-17 Oregon team to reach the NBA, also including Tyler Dorsey and Jordan Bell.
They wanted to see if the hard-headed freshman who won the starting point guard job could crack an even tougher rotation as an NBA rookie, this time on a team led by Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Marcus Smart and Kemba Walker.
“In any NBA player, whether you’re the shortest guy or the under-looked guy, if you always take challenges every single day to get better and then work out relentlessly, you can get better,” said Brooks. “That’s what I’ve seen from Day 1 with Payton.”
‘He was not backing down from nobody’
This time the names ahead of Pritchard in the point guard rotation included Tremont Waters, in some respects Carsen Edwards, and an 11-year veteran — Jeff Teague.
By training camp Pritchard had leapfrogged the first two and was competing with Teague for minutes. Teague got off to a tentative start, Pritchard hit just about every open 3-pointer that came his way, and was now a rookie backup to Smart and Walker.
That freshman year script now has a 2.0 version. “One hundred percent,” said Pritchard. “I’m not a first, second, third, fourth option on this team, so when I come in I have to find other ways to help the team win. Has to be through defense, through energy plays, and when you do get the ball it’s making plays quick, and being ready to spread the floor, so it’s very similar to freshman year.
“It’s about just being mature. The thing is, in these roles you have to find ways always to contribute — not get down if you don’t get the ball, not be down if you miss your first two shots. Just have to stay up and hope to help the team on the next play.”
As one of the greatest players in the history of Oregon high school basketball, Prichard has been winning jobs and minutes for a long time.
He walked into Oregon’s practice gym in 2016 and went after the incumbent, a junior point guard named Casey Benson. Benson started on the Oregon team that reached the Elite Eight the previous year. He played in over 90 games as a Duck, and by his junior season had the second-highest assist-turnover ratio (3.23-1) in Pac12 history.
“He was starting, so we had to match up,” said Pritchard. ”Casey is a good basketball player, had a tremendous year the year before. But in my head his job is what I wanted and I knew I had to beat him out. At the end of the day that’s what I went in to do and got the job.”
Like he owned the place. Boucher, a former junior college player of the year who had joined and helped lead Oregon to the 2016 Elite Eight, had no worries about his new teammate settling in.
“He was not backing down from nobody,” said Boucher. “He was working hard. He helped us a lot that year as a freshman. He ended up starting. He was working hard andJ learning from us, but he was getting ready for himself because that year most of us left and he had to be the leader of that team. Great player, good learner, he was always ready to work.
“He played his role perfectly and he was learning his role at the same time, so we couldn’t complain at all. He was not a problem for the team. As a rookie he was excelling at what he was good at — controlling the pace. With me, Dillon, Tyler, we had a lot of weapons, so he was doing a good job.”
But the mentality matched Pritchard’s. What set Oregon apart was that making the NBA wasn’t just a goal for all five starters — it was realistic.
“When Payton first came he was showing flashes of what he would do, but we already had a group,” said Boucher. “The year before we went to the Elite Eight. But he came in and went at Casey, anyone who was going at him, and he was doing his job. Then at the UCLA game he hit a 3 before Dillon hit the buzzer-beater, and that was a big moment for us. Here’s a freshman who isn’t scared of the moment, that was already a big part of him.”
The highlight of the regular season was Brooks’ game-winning 3-pointer against previously undefeated UCLA on Dec. 28, 2016, in Eugene. Pritchard hurried the ball up court, met Brooks with a handoff at the top of the arc and got out of the way as Brooks took Lonzo Ball right and launched his big shot with 2 seconds left.
But Brooks remembers Oregon’s preceding shot just as well — the one that put him in position to win it. Pritchard, his team trailing by four points, hit a 3-pointer from the left elbow off Brooks’ assist with 16 seconds left. Pritchard immediately fouled UCLA’s Bryce Alford, who missed the front end of a one-and-one, handing the ball back to Oregon with 10 seconds left.
But Brooks admits he wanted the shot that Pritchard fearlessly took.
“We were down three, and we ran a play for me to get a shot in the corner to tie it up, and they took it away and Payton had the ball on the left side, 45-extended, and he rose up to shoot that thing and I was like, ‘Damn,’ ” said Brooks. “He made it, and I was super happy for him. I was a little mad because I wanted to take the shot, too. Just goes to show that he’s not scared of the moment.”
The 89-87 win propelled the Ducks to a 33-6
season and a share of the Pac12 regular-season title. They lost to Arizona in the conference tournament final, and opened the NCAA Tournament as the No. 3 seed in the Midwest region. The Ducks beat Iona, Rhode Island, Michigan and Kansas before losing to eventual champion North Carolina on semifinal Saturday in University of Phoenix Stadium.
Brooks (Houston/Memphis),
Bell (Chicago) and Dorsey (Atlanta) were all taken in the second round of the NBA draft that June. Boucher, overlooked, signed as an undrafted free agent with Golden State, and got a 2018 championship ring as a two-way player. After the Warriors waived him in June, Boucher signed as a free agent with Toronto, and became the only Canadianborn player to win an NBA title with a Canadian team as part of that wild 2019 ride with Kawhi Leonard.
Pritchard, in the meantime, was focused on becoming the face of Oregon basketball and more. In the spring of 2020 he was named Pac-12 Player of the Year. He chose the four-year plan over leaving early, and it paid off. He became the only player off that 2017 Final Four team to go in the first round when the Celtics took him with the 26th pick of the 2021 draft.
“I experienced every different kind of role,” Pritchard said of his Oregon legacy. “I grew through all my four years of college, and entering the NBA I was most ready to contribute right away.”
Earning his shot
It took three days of training camp, to be exact.
“Payton made a strong impression on his NBA teammates in the first few days of training camp,” said Danny Ainge. “He didn’t have to win me over — he had to win over Brad (Stevens), and his coaching staff and the players. And he did that in the first few days of training camp. I had so many of the veterans really excited about Payton and what he could be.
“I kept hearing it from them as they walked by,” said Ainge. “He’s just a guy who takes the challenges. He made a lot of shots in training camp, and I think that stood out, not just making one, but you’re making three, four in a row. They’re contested shots and you’re unafraid to take them.”
Ainge was aware of Pritchard as a high school player, and though the point guard’s numbers were relatively modest as an Oregon freshman, what stood out for the Celtics president was Pritchard’s ability to fit in on a veteran team.
“As a freshman, I did not see him as a sure-fire NBA prospect at that moment in time,” said Ainge. “But I did see a very good basketball player who was playing a role amongst upperclassmen and was a great competitor. He was a lot of fun to watch even as a freshman averaging seven or eight points a game. He was fun to watch then, even though he wasn’t putting up big numbers. He was contributing to their winning, for sure.
“I don’t see a difference in how he handled himself as a freshman and a senior. But he has always played to win and played with great confidence.”
Brooks admits he was surprised. For all of his admiration of Pritchard, he didn’t expect, well, this.
“Yeah. I felt like he would get a chance since Kemba was out, and they just had Jeff Teague. So I felt he would have a chance,” said Brooks. “(But) I never thought he would play as much as he was. That’s just me not really realizing who Payton really is. “I imagine he was really getting after it in training camp and practice, and really showing his game when he was out there,” he said. “He understood what to do, his role, he’s hitting shots. It shocked me a little bit, but I knew his work ethic and the way he plays and understands the game, and being a fouryear guy that he would fit in well with the Celtics. “Every step through his career I’ve just been proud of him, because he came from a long way — coming off the bench and fighting for the job as starting point guard, after a year where Casey Benson was leading the whole country in assist-turnover ratio. “He just had a little dog in him — you can probably see that.”