Payton Pritchard is a bargain, and the Celtics have a short window to use it. He makes $7,767,857 this season, per Basketball Reference, which makes him only the sixth-highest-paid player on the roster, behind Jayson Tatum, Paul George, Derrick White, Mitchell Robinson and Sam Hauser. Last season he averaged 17.0 points and started 50 games.
On Monday, HoopsHype’s Frank Urbina ranked Pritchard 22nd on a list of the most underpaid players in NBA history. My take, as of Monday’s home game against Chicago: the ranking is right, and the October extension that will more than double his pay in 2028 doesn’t change it. Boston has two more seasons of him at under $8.5 million a year. With Jaylen Brown gone and more than half the payroll tied up in two forwards, that cheap production is what holds this roster together, and the Celtics should use every minute of it.
What the ranking says
HoopsHype’s Real Value metric estimates what a player’s production is worth on the market. It puts Pritchard’s career value at $78.5 million against $24.4 million in actual earnings, a gap of $54.2 million. Urbina wrote that Pritchard “just posted a season that saw his Real Value outpace his actual salary by $26.8 million,” and that if he keeps up that level, “he’s actually going to fly up this ranking soon.” Two other players with Celtics ties made the list: Isaiah Thomas at No. 12 and Tatum at No. 14.
His salary history on Basketball Reference adds up to $24,378,289 across six seasons: $2.0 million as a rookie in 2020-21, $6.7 million in his Sixth Man of the Year season of 2024-25, $7.2 million last season. Over those six seasons he won a championship ring in 2024 and the Sixth Man award, and he earned less than Tatum makes in half a season now.
What $7.2 million bought last season
Last season is the one that broke the scale. With Tatum limited to 16 games, Pritchard played 79, started 50 and averaged 17.0 points, 5.2 assists and 3.9 rebounds in 32.4 minutes, all career highs, per Basketball Reference. Among Celtics who played more than 16 games, only Brown, at 28.7, scored more per game. Boston went 56-26 and finished second in the East.
He did it without the shooting season that won him the Sixth Man award. In 2024-25 he made 255 threes at 40.7 percent. Last season he dipped to 37.7 percent from deep and took far more of his shots inside the arc, with his two-point attempts rising from 3.0 to 6.7 a game. That is a guard growing into a creator because his team needed one, which is a better sign for the next four years than one hot shooting year would be.
The extension is a fair price
On Oct. 13, Pritchard and the Celtics agreed to a two-year, $44.2 million extension, first reported by ESPN’s Shams Charania. It starts in 2028-29 at $21,228,200, then pays $22,926,456 in 2029-30, a season that carries a mutual option. Before any of that, he plays out the last two years of the four-year, $30 million deal he signed in October 2023: $7.8 million this season and $8.3 million next.
Pritchard has heard the doubts his whole career. “Everybody always tries to put people in a box, and for every year of my career since I’ve been young, people put me in this box of like, ‘This is the player you can be,’” he said in September, as The Boston Globe reported. “And I just feel like, those expectations, I kind of blow them out the water.”
Some will see a jump to $21 million for a 6-1 guard who will be 30 when it starts and call it an overpay. I don’t. By HoopsHype’s own estimate, last season’s production was worth $26.8 million more than the $7.2 million Boston paid him. The extension’s biggest salary is well below that combined figure, so Pritchard can slip a fair amount from his 2025-26 level and still earn his money. And the Celtics didn’t have to bid against anyone to keep him.
Why the cap makes him essential
When Brad Stevens explained the Brown trade in July, he said the path ahead “looked a little bit more challenging with 70% of our (salary) cap, and such a high percent of our usage tied into two players,” per the Associated Press on NBA.com. The trade changed the names, not the shape. Tatum ($58.5 million) and George ($54.1 million) make $112.6 million between them this season, about 57 percent of the $198.7 million in salaries Basketball Reference lists for Boston. How long George holds up at 36 decides whether that money buys a contender, which is why Boston has to guard Paul George’s minutes. I broke down the fallout from that deal in why Jaylen Brown’s jab at Jayson Tatum is aimed at the wrong Celtic.
When two players take that much of the money, the rest of the rotation has to outplay its contracts. Pritchard is the clearest case on the roster: about 3.9 percent of the payroll for a guard who outscored every full-season Celtic except Brown a year ago.
Two quiet games don’t change it
The start has been slow. Joe Mazzulla has started Jordan Walsh with White, Tatum, George and Robinson in both games, citing Walsh’s defense. “Jordan continues to be really good at the start of games,” Mazzulla said when asked about Walsh’s starts in the preseason. Pritchard is 5-of-14 from the field through two games off the bench, per Basketball Reference. He scored 17 in the opening loss at Detroit, on 4-of-9 shooting and 7-of-8 at the line, then four points on 1-of-5 in Friday’s 107-103 win over the Knicks, when Boston was still plus-8 with him on the floor.
He is playing 29 minutes a night anyway, which is the number I care about. Coming off the bench is how he won Sixth Man two seasons ago, and I’d leave the lineup alone as long as his minutes stay there. The schedule gives him plenty of chances right away: Chicago tonight at TD Garden, Brooklyn on Tuesday, then Chicago again on Friday in an NBA Cup game, per the Celtics schedule on Basketball Reference.
The window is this season and next. After that, Pritchard gets paid like the player he already is, and the Celtics should spend the cheap years on as many minutes as he can handle.