Pritchard is done with Celtics Summer League after stellar run originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
Payton Pritchard‘s run with the Boston Celtics‘ NBA Summer League team in Las Vegas has come to an end.
“We were able to talk as a team and an organization and Payton won’t be with us the rest of the way,” Celtics Summer League coach Joe Mazzulla told reporters Friday. “That’s a prior engagement he made months ago and it’s something we honored. We’ll be moving forward”
Pritchard looked amazing in Boston’s first three summer league games, all of which were wins, including a dominant 108-71 victory over the Orlando Magic on Thursday night.
The 2020 first-round draft pick averaged 20.3 points, 8.7 assists, 4.7 rebounds and 2.0 steals per game for the Celtics in the 2021 NBA Summer League. He also shot 51.4 percent from the field with an impressive 57.7 percent rate from 3-point range.
Pritchard hit four of his six 3-point shots in the win over the Magic. A couple of those 3-pointers were from a long distance, too:
Pritchard leaving the Summer League team isn’t a huge deal. In all honesty, he was probably too good for that league, anyway. We’ve seen that plenty of times with second-year players. The Celtics have several first-year players who would benefit more from Pritchard’s Summer League minutes than he would.
The Celtics resume Summer League action Saturday against the Philadelphia 76ers at 5 p.m. ET.