Pritchard scored 33 points on Saturday night.
Pritchard scored 33 points on Saturday night.
Payton Pritchard had a huge third quarter that propelled the Celtics sans Jaylen Brown to a gutsy 112-96 win over the Raptors on Saturday.
Here are the takeaways. Payton Pritchard went off (and kept the Celtics alive).
The Celtics were on the verge of letting Saturday’s game slip away in the third quarter, but Pritchard had no intention of letting that happen.
With Jaylen Brown sidelined on the second night of a back-to-back on the road, the Celtics trailed by seven with five minutes left in the third. They had already thrown a first-half punch with a 16-0 run in the first quarter, which the Raptors absorbed and countered, and the Celtics’ offense sputtered at times in the second and third quarters.
But Pritchard — who was already in a bit of a rhythm — hit a tough stepback two that trimmed the lead to five. On the next possession, he zigged and zagged through the paint before dishing to Sam Hauser for a triple. On the next possession, he drilled a 3-pointer of his own. Suddenly, the Celtics had flipped the deficit into a lead.
The Celtics and Raptors exchanged blows, but Pritchard took control for the rest of the period — he scored or assisted on every Celtics basket as they built a three-point lead entering the fourth.
Pritchard flirted with a triple-double (and even stole a rebound from Derrick White in the closing seconds, long after his near-triple-double was a lost cause), posting 33 points on 13-for-24 shooting to go with eight rebounds and 10 assists. He was 4-for-9 from deep, but the bulk of his scoring came from his forays into the paint — vanishingly few players of Pritchard’s stature can get to their spots as easily as he can, and he makes short jumpers over bigger players look far easier than they have any right to look.
On a night when the Celtics were without Brown and when Derrick White shot 5-for-20 from the field (more on this in a minute), they managed to win for a few different reasons, but the biggest one was that Pritchard can now be the driving engine for a team in a win over a good opponent.It’s going to be difficult for Celtics fans to remain calm about Hugo González.
González played a career-high in minutes against the Heat on Friday, and with Jordan Walsh barely healthy enough to play on Saturday with an illness, González had another big opportunity that he seized tight enough to throttle it.
For the second straight evening, González recorded 10 points, two steals and a block, but on Saturday, he added 10 rebounds to his total — his first career double-double.
