The Pritchin' Hour

Payton Pritchard put on a masterclass as the Boston Celtics pulled away in the fourth quarter.

It was my wife’s birthday on Friday. We saw Wicked at the Cinema with some family. How fitting was it that I spent the evening watching a movie (well, more of a musical) about a witch, only to wake yesterday morning and watch Payton Prtichard turn into a fourth-quarter warlock?

19 points in the fourth.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a diminutive guard wearing Celtics green have such a dominant showing to close out a game.

Full disclosure: I tried writing this piece yesterday, but the hangover won. It’s taken me until now, at 6 pm (UK Time) on Sunday, to muster the concentration and mental capacity to finish it.

The difference is that the Celtics were an overperforming roster in the early stages of a rebuild when Isaiah Thomas was taking over. Pritchard did it as part of a championship rotation. While that’s totally Pritchin’ for the fifth-year guard, it raises some questions for the C’s.

Getting Kristaps Porzingis back was supposed to shore up the defense. We’re only two games into his return, so there’s plenty of time for that to happen. Yet, it was clear the Celtics struggled against the tempo of the Chicago Bulls offense.

In fairness, the Celtics have struggled against high-tempo teams all season. Yes, they’ve won almost all of those games, but a lot of the time, it’s been a dog fight. First of all, let’s not get this twisted, I’m not talking about transition offense — the Celtics have improved here and currently sit joint 11th in the league, allowing 1.08 points per transition possession.

Yes, the Bulls pushed the pace in transition, but it’s the speed of their decision-making, penetration and finding quality shots that gave the Celtics issues. Every time Boston started to pull away, the Bulls would find ways to peg them back.

Whether that was Nikola Vucevic draining four threes in the second quarter or Talen Horton-Tucker waiting until deep into the fourth quarter to miss his first shot, Chicago found gaps and exploited them.

“That team's really good,” Joe Mazzulla said. “And when they get out and transition and play with pace, and they're a team in the sense of when their role players were playing at a high level, it's like you got to pick and choose your poison. So, I didn't think we got off to a great start. They got out in transition. We had the lead and kind and our offensive execution got them back into it. They were kind of clicking on all cylinders with their role players hitting threes, Vucevic hitting threes, and LasVine playing really well. And I just kind of thought we chipped away at it, just making the plays that we needed to make once we got them out of transition into the half-court.”