Celtics Notes: Payton Pritchard Calls Out Thunder, Path to Keeping Al Horford Revealed, More

Boston Celtics point guard Payton Pritchard took a shot at the Oklahoma City Thunder, who won the NBA Championship in the 2024-25 season.

“When you see OKC and them win the championship, they got away with a lot of hands, fouls, a lot of physicality. Stuff like that,” he said. “The NBA, I feel like, in the playoffs is allowing a lot more physicality now. But you’ve got to learn how to play through it and be more physical. We’re emphasizing it. It’s been good.”

The Celtics are short on big men heading into the new season, having lost Kristaps Porzingis, Al Horford and Luke Kornet during the offseason.

Brian Robb of MassLive revealed the Celtics had the cap space to keep Horford during the offseason, which would have greatly helped their depth in 2025-26.

"The Celtics definitely could have afforded that purely based on salary, but the fact that they are a repeater tax team this year complicates the finances a bit. Currently, Boston is $12 million over the tax threshold, but every additional dollar they spend now on the team would cost $5.50 in repeater tax penalties. That fact undoubtedly impacted what Boston was willing to offer Horford during a year in which the Celtics aren’t expected to have Tatum available much, if at all." 

Here’s more information on these stories and all the latest Celtics news (click the headline for the full article):

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