STOUGHTON, Mass. — Payton Pritchard sat down in the middle of the court alongside Celtics athletic trainer Zay Covington for a question-and-answer session with the several dozen children and parents in attendance at one of several basketball camps he hosted this summer. For close to 30 minutes, he fielded routine inquiries about how he started playing, the lessons he learned on the way to the NBA, playing with and against other stars while becoming a champion. Yet the most popular question echoed one asked around New England, the country and the world this offseason. What happened with that Jaylen Brown trade?
Asked more succinctly by a camper, Is it sad that Jaylen Brown left the Celtics?
“Yeah,” Pritchard said as the crowd laughed. “It’s always sad to see a teammate go.”
While the Brown-Paul George swap shocked fans this offseason, Pritchard entered his sixth offseason expecting surprises. His first training camp followed Al Horford’s return to Boston from Oklahoma City and ensuing summers featured Malcolm Brogdon and Jrue Holiday’s arrivals followed by their departures. The Marcus Smart trade similarly stunned Boston, then turned into a championship season. Pritchard lived through all that and his own trade rumors before emerging as the second longest-tenured Celtic behind Jayson Tatum.
It doesn’t feel that way, he reflected with The Garden Report on CLNS Media on Saturday at the camp. He still prepares for each season as if he’s new and needs to prove himself, leaning into his widely publicized workouts with friends and overseas professionals who he urges to test him where he needs improvement. Next season, he wants to draw more free throws and he already made a significant amount of Chipotle orders for those who helped him do so.
“It’s part of the business. Nothing’s actually that shocking to me anymore,” Pritchard said. “You’re just used to seeing big things and I think changes happen all the time. It always sucks to see a brother and a teammate that you played with for a long time go, but you move on and you get ready to go to war against him.”
Pritchard recounted learning so much from Brown through their one-on-one battles and six seasons together in Boston. Brown attended Pritchard’s wedding in 2024 after they helped deliver the first Celtics championship in 16 years. Pritchard emerged as the Sixth Man of the Year in the following season, and took another step alongside Brown in 2026 between starting and bench roles. Now, the Celtics will look to Pritchard, George, their younger players who took steps last season and Tatum to make up for what they lost in Brown. Joe Mazzulla said in Las Vegas that they won’t ask any single player to replace Brown, but Yahoo noted after that trade that Pritchard holds a particularly intriguing track record of producing with Brown off the floor.
The Celtics began that process by joining George for runs in Los Angeles. Pritchard, Tatum, Derrick White, Mike Conley and Sam Hauser attended the early sessions and bonded in the gym, and he expected more teammates to travel west to continue that process before training camp begins in one month. Pritchard and Conley played three rounds of golf in California, with Conley winning the first two and leaving Pritchard with the sense that he’s third in the organizational hierarchy on the course behind Conley and Hauser.
“I look up to Mike and the career he’s had,” Pritchard said. “If I could have remotely close to the career he’s had, then that’s a very successful career. It’s somebody I’ll take a lot of things from and hopefully have a great friendship and mentorship with that. I’m going to be picking his brain all the time … obviously PG, self explanatory, he’s a phenomenal player, so we already know what he’ll do and then with Mitchell (Robinson), I was actually his roommate when I was in college one time for USA, but I think he’s gonna be great for us. The things we need, the rebounding, the toughness inside, he’s gonna bring it.”
Tatum looked good nearly 15 months removed from Achilles surgery and his postseason knee surgery, Pritchard recalled. He expected Tatum to show even more strength and explosiveness compared to his return in the spring.
Pritchard sees the Celtics’ front court depth as a strength now between Neemias Queta, Luka Garza and Robinson. He hasn’t reunited with Robinson yet as Boston’s players take their summer travels, but remembered him as a nice kid and sharing their different backgrounds between Oregon and Florida. Robinson also brought championship experience to the Celtics from New York’s run in June, joining Tatum, White, Hauser and Pritchard as the only remaining rotation players from Boston’s run.
“I feel like I’m middle of the pack age-wise, maybe second longest-tenured Celtic, which is crazy,” Pritchard said. “I still have that same hunger to come in and prove it, and earn more and more. I just think that’s just more my mentality in general. It’s how I grew up. You gotta keep showing it. The moment you stop showing it is the moment they’ll move on from you.”
Part of Pritchard’s staying power in Boston emerged from playing on one of the league’s great bargain contracts. While making $7.8 million next season, Steph Noh’s value projection model forecasted his value being closer to $30 million. Pritchard and the Celtics can begin extension talks on Oct. 1 with an intriguing choice between securing as many as three years and $69 million beyond the $16.1-million left on his deal through 2028, or waiting for next offseason to wait for more years. He could also bet on himself becoming a top free agent. But the beloved guard and west coast native found a home in Boston and is expecting his first child next season.
With his focus on 2026-27, he relayed lessons learned from the Celtics’ 3-1 meltdown against the 76ers in spring. You can’t let a team feel comfortable, he said, recalling that he didn’t believe Philadelphia wanted to win Game 5 while trailing in the second half and that they fed the Sixers confidence by letting them in it. He commended a great regular season, called the playoff finish disappointing and wants the Celtics to take on a harder-playing mentality into 2027. Yet for a team that has expressed no difference between the regular season and playoffs, Pritchard noted a shift in mentality and some early emphases that he mentioned several times at Saturday’s camp.
“Playing really hard and making smart reads and decisions,” Pritchard said. “That’s the biggest thing, and we need everybody to take a step. Regular season wins, you win by playing hard and then in the playoffs, you win by playing harder and smarter. That’s really the recipe.”
“I’ve been with (Mazzulla) a lot,” he said. “He wants guys to take a leadership jump, be more of a player-led team and so looking forward to that.”
