PP has had a down year so far in the shooting category, which has started to come around the past 2 games. Even with this being his best trait (most likely) he has still found a way to impact each and every game in a positive way. He has a great AST/TO ratio and the Celtics are +99 with him on the court this season, in about 20 min/gm that he plays. Which equates to…
AN NBA LEADING NET RATING OF +16.5!!!
i was shocked when i looked this up. i know it isnt a perfect stats, but still quite impressive, especially considering his shooting woes to begin this season.
he is by no means a perfect player, but he is showing he can positively impact winning without shooting remotely close to his baseline.
🤣
You just know it’s a bucket when PP slices the defense, gets under the rim and kicks it out to a wide open shooter. Defenders get so hungry for the block on a small guy and he uses that against them.
You can see his confidence when he’s taking and making those deep 3s.
I like the passion on the sub, but there’s a bit of an inexperienced focus on individual plays and stats. Shooting; blocks and individual D stats.
Players have a lot of roles on teams; Pritchard’s is not to shoot to score. That is not the same as saying “it doesn’t matter if he can’t shoot.” And it seems that a lot of people can’t figure that out.
His primary job is to not turn the ball over, while creating motion on offense. He does that very well. If his primary job were to shoot spot up 3’s, we’d be fucked - but it isn’t. That’s Hauser’s role.
There are a lot of areas where specific players on the team can and should improve (JB: boxing out; Tatum: moving off-ball when he doesn’t have possession, etc.). And no player is going to be perfect. But it’s a downer that so many seem to have a PlayStation perspective: players are evaluated solely by individual offensive production. That’s just not how things work.
great post. could not agree more on many of your points. i think he also functions as a pace driver, which at times is needed.
when someone says “played well” it really means they shot well, and when they “played poorly” they just didnt hit many shots. this is a bad way to evaluate as with small sample sizes the shot numbers are going to have alot of randomness from game to game. players can play great without shooting well, or play poorly while shooting a high percentage from the field.
There was a great article posted yesterday about the Celtics defense, and switch matching. PP is featured heavily in many of the excellent videos.