The NBA announced on Tuesday that Boston Celtics guard Payton Pritchard won the Sixth Man of the Year award.
Pritchard won the prize in the Landslide Victory, 82 out of 100 votes. Pritchard finished the game with 454 points, leading 175 points above Detroit Pistons guard Malik Beasley, who finished second with 279 points.
Beasley, Ty Jerome, De'andre Hunter and Naz Reid were the only players to finish No. 1.
Oregon’s season five with the Celtics was the best of his career. Pritchard played 80 games, mainly from the bench to take offense.
Despite the bench, Pritchard still recorded 28.4 minutes per game and saw his shooting volume and efficiency improvements. He shot nearly 11 shots per game, knocking down those attempts with a 47.2% cut, the highest percentage of his career in his shooting and also brightened up from Deep with a 40.7% shot. With his shooting volume and role in Joe Mazzulla offense, Pritchard averaged 14.3 points per game, his highest career, up nearly five points from last season.
Earlier this season, Pritchard talked about his game mentality and mentality in an interview with SLAM. He said his mindset was, “Don’t think about it, just shoot it.” For Pritchard, that means triple from half-field buzzer stirrer to pull-up. It doesn't matter whether the difficulties are difficult, no matter what the situation is, the man gets the bucket.
Especially in the March 5 game against the Portland Trail Blazers. In a battle with the Cavaliers, the top seed of the East is a brief Celtics against the Portland Cross Country Trail Blazers. Without Jayson Tatum and Kristaps Porzingis, Pritchard played nearly 43 minutes on the bench and dropped a career-high 43 points on a 14-20 shooting night. This also includes placing 10 triple doubles and posting double doubles, knocking the glass down 10 boards hard.
Nights like this are not uncommon in Pritchard, with the Celtics determined to back-to-back, expecting the sixth man of the year to continue to explode on the bench when it matters most.
