Celtics guard Payton Pritchard drops fiery truth bomb on NBA “garbage time”

On Saturday evening, Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics improved to an impressive record of 30-9 on the 2023-24 NBA season with a dominant home win over the Houston Rockets. Although Tatum left this one early after getting ejected arguing a foul call, he and his Boston teammates were still able to do more than enough to bounce back after last week’s disaster against the Milwaukee Bucks.

One Celtics player who got to shine on Saturday against the Rockets was shooting guard Payton Pritchard, who scored 19 points off the bench in the victory. After the game, Pritchard was asked about his increased opportunity to play when the game was already out of hand in the fourth quarter in what is sometimes referred to as “garbage time,” with the game essentially no longer in question.

“I don’t ever look at it like garbage time,” said Pritchard, per Noa Dalzell of CelticsBlog on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “It’s just an opportunity for me to hoop… everybody is an NBA guy, at the end of the day. This is top level basketball here.”

Indeed, even the “garbage time” minutes in an NBA game run circles around the level of basketball being played in any other organization around the world, at least in terms of sheer talent. For his part, Pritchard has looked more comfortable with the consistent minutes he’s been given following the departures of both Marcus Smart and Malcolm Brogdon this past offseason.

The Celtics will next take the floor on Monday evening against the Toronto Raptors.