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Shortly after the NBA Finals ended in June, Payton Pritchard sat with a pen and paper to write down his lessons from the series.
Pritchard’s father, Terry, had long ago suggested journaling to organize his ideas. These days, Payton has five or six notepads, all filled with various thoughts. After grabbing the closest one, he will jot workout plans. He will note how his body feels. He will map out routines and regimens to use. Later, he will return to the pages and reflect on his progress.
“It’s easier to write down your thoughts than to keep it up here,” Pritchard said, pointing to his head.
Pritchard said he sometimes uses a journal as a “burn book,” referencing the movie “Mean Girls.” In that film, a group of high school girls create such a book to write hurtful rumors and gossip about other students. Unlike the girls in that movie, Pritchard doesn’t write cruel things about others, but he does register criticism he hears from certain people. As far back as middle school, he said, he tracked other parents, players or coaches who doubted him. Back then, most people thought he was foolish to dream about playing Division I or reaching the NBA.
“I knew the people who said that s—,” Pritchard said. “And I wrote their names down. I have everything in the book.”
Pritchard’s best NBA season had ended unforgettably. After years of frustrating competitions for playing time, he had seized his most consistent minutes off the bench for the Boston Celtics. During a 4-1 NBA Finals win against the Dallas Mavericks, he had stamped himself as the “heave god” with two of the biggest shots in the series. The second, a 49-foot first-half buzzer-beater in Game 5, had all but sealed Boston’s first championship since 2008. It was the culmination of Pritchard’s long journey to becoming the Celtics’ master of hopeless situations. They weren’t hopeless for him.
“That dude,” Jaylen Brown said of Pritchard’s Game 5 heroics. “He’s a f—— legend, man.”
On the night Pritchard cemented his team’s championship, he sat on the bench until the final four seconds of the first half. The previous 23 minutes and 56 seconds stuck with him. He believed he defended well throughout the playoffs but noticed his offense dried up. As a result, his playing time dwindled late in the series. Never again would he give his coaching staff a reason to sit him.
On a piece of paper, Pritchard detailed the parts of his game he would need to change.
“I never wanted to have that feeling again of not playing,” Pritchard said. “Having to get better in every area so there’s never a game where they feel like I shouldn’t be on the court.”
Some details of “The Alchemist” have escaped Pritchard since he first read the book in high school, but one theme spoke loudest to him. In the quest for treasure, only giving up promises failure.
“You’ll always get to where you’re going as long as you don’t quit,” Pritchard said. “So that’s my mindset.”
Known for his elite work ethic, he said he pushed himself harder over the summer. After returning from the Olympic training camp, where he was a member of the U.S. select team, he organized a daily basketball version of “Squid Game.”
Four or five times per week, Pritchard welcomed two, or preferably three, college or professional players who would do nothing but defend him for roughly two hours a day. Even when traveling, Pritchard said he would find capable players to guard him and hit the gym. Though he couldn’t always find the positions he wanted, Pritchard sought to have one guard, one wing and one center to defend him during each session. He wanted players of different sizes, armed with different strengths, to simulate the scenarios he would encounter in a real game. He didn’t want anyone he could beat with pure quickness — only athletes he would need to out-fox with skill. He wanted competitors.
“That’s one of his non-negotiables,” said Brooks DeBisschop, a 6-foot-10 professional center in Spain, one of Pritchard’s closest friends and a workout regular. “He doesn’t want people that aren’t competitive around him because if you get people who don’t really care about winning and losing, he feels like you’re losing your edge.”
At each training session, the 6-1 Pritchard would play one-on-one with the defenders at seven spots, according to his brother Anthony Mathis. A 6-3 guard who played pro in the G League and overseas, Mathis often lined up against Pritchard in drills. At each spot, Pritchard would place two cones to restrict the space he had to move. If he scored on at least three of five possessions, he would win. For each win by one of the defenders, Pritchard would put money into a pot. When he shut out one of the defenders at a spot, Pritchard would take money out. Some days, DeBisschop said, the pot would grow as big as $500.
The three defenders of the day cycled in for one another, ensuring they could rest. Even so, DeBisschop said he’d be exhausted late in a session. Pritchard stayed on the court the entire time. The defenders would be physical and the competition was heated. Pritchard never stopped.
“His conditioning, that might be his best trait,” said DeBisschop, who met Prichard when he was 9. “I mean, people look at Payton and go, ‘Oh, well, he doesn’t have typical NBA size or athleticism and some of these things.’ But what he does have is an uncanny ability to perform work at a high level repetitively.”
Even as a child, Pritchard regularly worked out several times a day. He said he would wake up 30 minutes before Mathis, who lived with the family after Pritchard’s parents became his legal guardians. Pritchard wanted to do a ballhandling workout before Mathis had opened his eyes. With his work, Pritchard wanted to send a message to his older brother.
“I didn’t need to say it, but just so he knew that I already had a leg up on him,” Pr…
