Brad Stevens makes savvy bet with Payton Pritchard extension

The Celtics have slowly but surely pushed more of their chips all in on the present with the acquisitions of Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis over the past three months. The moves have put Boston atop the contenders in the Eastern Conference but also created a couple of complicated issues for the front office. The team’s payroll is about to get incredibly expensive with four current and potential All-Stars on the roster and the team’s depth of assets has taken a hit with pulling off these deals.

A championship will clearly ease the pain of those complications in the next couple of years but sustaining a contender may end up being a bigger challenge down the line. In order to do that, assets and depth pieces have to be rebuilt. On Sunday, the Celtics took an important step in that process with a four-year extension for Payton Pritchard worth $30 million per league sources.

In a way, the deal rectifies a miscue Brad Stevens made last summer when the team opted to relegate Pritchard deeper into the bench and acquire Malcolm Brogdon. The Celtics got a great regular season campaign out of Brogdon as a Sixth Man but it came at a high price ($22 million salary and a first round pick) while a younger, cheaper and promising player in Pritchard got pushed to the side. Brogdon was never a perfect crunch-time fit for this roster as evidenced by the team’s struggles in those moments all year long and so the team upgraded from him (and Marcus Smart) by adding Holiday.

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However, an important side factor of those trades this summer was opening the door to Pritchard becoming a meaningful rotation player again. It’s something he showed he could be during the 2022 NBA Finals run and keeping proven and cheap situational talent on the bench is going to be integral for this group to get to where it wants to go.

With this latest extension, the Celtics are clearly betting on a Pritchard breakout happening and locking him up before the price potentially goes up with strong play is a savvy gamble. With a game-high 26 points off the bench in Boston’s preseason-opening win on Sunday night, the Celtics can already feel good about their bet.

There’s no guarantee that Pritchard will finish out his next contract in Boston but what feels probable is that the 25-year-old will be an asset while earning an average of $7.5 million the next four years, far under the mid-level exception. That’s a contract the Celtics can afford to keep off the bench amid a sea of high-priced starters. It also could become a deal that would be appealing to potential suitors if Stevens finds one more piece he thinks could put this team over the top.

Either way, Stevens created a situation where Pritchard could see a future in Boston for the long term after a rocky season, enabling a team-friendly deal like this to come to fruition.

“I think, when I signed it, it was almost like a relief, a feeling of being secure,” Pritchard said Sunday. “That was kind of my mindset toward it. I wanted to lock something in so I wasn’t playing this year out.”

Just how important of a player Pritchard becomes for a stacked Celtics squad this season remains to be seen. However, Stevens and the team’s front office took a big step in sustaining their depth and adding to their asset pool with this deal.