By the end of Payton Pritchard’s flurry of 3-pointers against the Trail Blazers, it looked inevitable that he was going to at least tie a Celtics record. After three quarters of play Wednesday, Pritchard had already made 10 3-pointers as part of a career night.
Considering the Celtics franchise record is 11 made 3s in a single game, set by Marcus Smart in 2020, Pritchard had a great chance to tie or break it. But by the end of the night, Pritchard ended with 10 made 3s, so Smart’s record stood another day. After the game, Pritchard explained the blunt reason why he didn’t explicitly aim for the single-game 3-point record.
“I didn’t even know I had 10 3s at the moment, but I wouldn’t have gunned for it anyways because then it sets a new standard,” Pritchard said. “I feel like that’s disrespectful to the game, disrespectful to my teammates. But if I got it in the flow and took a shot that was a good shot for us and broke it that way, then that’s the right way to break it.”
Of course, it all worked out for the Celtics as they beat an upstart Blazers team 128-118. Pritchard ended up breaking an NBA record anyway, though it wasn’t any individual effort. Instead, Pritchard teamed up with Derrick White to set a new NBA and a new Celtics record.
On the NBA side, Pritchard and White became the first set of teammates to each hit more than nine 3-pointers in the same game. Pritchard finished Wednesday shooting 10-for-16 on 3-pointers while White went 9-for-17 from deep. Pritchard also scored a career-high 43 points while White also had a career-high with 41 points. That’s a Celtics record as the first-ever duo to put up at least 40-plus points each in the same game.
As Pritchard noted, he wasn’t guns blazing down the stretch of the game. He only attempted one 3-pointer in the fourth quarter, which he missed. There were multiple possessions where, instead of hoisting up a 3, he drove to the bucket to set up a teammate instead. So the process was still sound even if history was right in front of him. The NBA gods ended up rewarding him anyway with a different record in tandem with White.
“Me and P were talking about it and it was kind of crazy like, we weren’t even hitting the rim, just swishes,” White said. “You get hot and I felt like I was getting a lot of really good looks, and so credit to the offense that we were running and the guys for finding me.”
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