By Joe Vardon
The NBA named the Boston Celtics’ Payton Pritchard as Sixth Man of the Year on Tuesday after a career year for the point guard in which he scored more points off the bench than anyone in the league this season and made more 3-pointers than any reserve player in history.
Pritchard, 27, easily defeated the Detroit Pistons’ Malik Beasley and the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Ty Jerome as the NBA’s top bench player, according to results from voting by 100 media members released by the league. Pritchard’s triumph was announced on TNT before Game 2 of the first-round playoff series between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Memphis Grizzlies.
Advertisement
Pritchard picked up 82 first-place votes, winning in a landslide. Beasley, who finished second, garnered 13 first-place votes, and Jerome earned as many first-place votes as his teammate, De’Andre Hunter (Jerome’s 12 second-place and 45 third-place votes helped him finish third in voting).
“I mean, there are a lot of people in the Celtics’ organization, obviously (starting with) John Havlicek, who the award was named after,” Pritchard said during an on-air interview with TNT. “Kevin McHale, obviously, a couple other guys — Malcolm Brogdon, I was here with him and watched him win it. … Bill Walton, so it’s definitely an honor.”
Pritchard, who is 6-1 and in his fifth season in Boston, averaged 14.3 points and shot 41 percent from 3-point range in 28.4 minutes per game for the defending champs. He also averaged 3.8 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 0.9 steals. He played in 80 games and made just three starts; in those 77 games in which he came off the Celtics’ bench, Pritchard scored 1,079 points and made 246 3s — setting the NBA mark for 3s by a bench player and obliterating the previous record of 218 3s by Wayne Ellington for Miami in 2018.
Boston outscored opponents by 428 points in Pritchard’s minutes off the bench, which topped the NBA for reserve players. Counting Pritchard’s three starts, the Celtics were 430 points better than their opponents when Pritchard was on the court, and Pritchard’s 255 total 3-pointers were the fifth most in the league. He made just 10 fewer 3s than teammate Derrick White, who played 300 more minutes than Pritchard, and one more 3-pointer than perennial All-Star and MVP candidate Jayson Tatum.
“It’s definitely a learning curve (playing with as many stars as Boston has),” Pritchard said. “Coming from college, where everything was run for me, to coming here, I’m playing with a lot of stars. It’s definitely a feel, I feel like I am still getting better at it. It’s reading the game, knowing when maybe the defense is keying on (Tatum), (Jaylen Brown) more, and they kind of leave gaps open, and you gotta take advantage of those opportunities.”
The 26th pick of the 2020 draft out of Oregon, Pritchard scored a career-high 43 points with a Boston-record 10 3s (as a reserve) and 10 rebounds on March 5 in a win over Portland. White scored 41 points with nine 3s that day, joining Pritchard to become the first teammates in NBA history to combine for 19 3s in the same game.
Advertisement
Pritchard enjoyed one of the greatest seasons by a Boston bench player in history. He was the first Celtic reserve to score at least 20 points in four consecutive games since Isaiah Thomas in 2015, the first to ever score at least 15 points with three 3s in five straight games, and is the only Celtic to have multiple streaks with five or more 3s off the bench.
Beasley set a Pistons record and was second in the NBA (among starters and reserves) with 319 3s. His 233 3-pointers off of Detroit’s bench were the second most by a reserve in league history, behind Pritchard, and Beasley was a catalyst for the Pistons’ historic turnaround season. They went from the worst team in the league last year to the No. 6 seed in the Eastern Conference, more than tripling their win total.
Jerome averaged 12.5 points off the bench for the Cavs, who had the best offense in the NBA and were one of the league’s top two teams all season. After missing all but two games a year ago due to a confounding ankle injury that required surgery, Jerome returned to enjoy what was easily the best of his six NBA seasons. He shot better than 50 percent from the field, 40 percent from the 3-point line and was an 87 percent foul shooter. His scoring average was the highest in the league for any player averaging fewer than 20 minutes (19.9 mpg).
The NBA’s Sixth Man award is the first to be handed out this postseason. The league will unveil its Clutch, Defensive Player of the Year and Hustle award winners Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
The MVP, Coach of the Year, Most Improved Player and Rookie of the Year will be announced later.
(Photo: Petre Thomas / Imagn Images)
Joe Vardon is a senior NBA writer for The Athletic, based in Cleveland. Follow Joe on Twitter @joevardon
