{"id":550817,"date":"2026-01-29T05:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T05:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/550817\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T05:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T05:12:11","slug":"payton-pritchard-master-of-the-late-shot-wowed-by-hawks-lucky-heave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/550817\/","title":{"rendered":"Payton Pritchard, master of the late shot, wowed by Hawks lucky heave"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOSTON \u2014 Boston Celtics<\/a> point guard Payton Pritchard is the king of shots that make your jaw drop. However, he was the one left stunned on Wednesday night during a 117-106 loss to the Atlanta Hawks at TD Garden.<\/p>\n

After trailing by as many as 23 points, the Celtics managed to cut the Hawks’ lead down to 15 with 5:31 remaining in the fourth quarter. Then, Pritchard was nearly able to get a stop on the other end and force a 24-second violation, but Hawks guard Nickeil Alexander-Walker had other plans. Despite Pritchard’s harassing defense and the shot clock winding down, Alexander-Walker threw up a 33-foot prayer off his left hand that somehow banked in, generating an abundance of groans from the home crowd.<\/p>\n

Following that circus shot, the Celtics never got the Hawks’ lead under 15 points until all of the starters came out of the game in garbage time. Pritchard told Celtics Wire that sometimes in the NBA, it’s just not your night, and Alexander-Walker’s astonishing 3-pointer was an example of that.<\/p>\n

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“Just tip your cap,” Pritchard said of the big shot. “I’m sure that we’ve hit shots, and I’ve hit shots, where other opponents are just mind-blown.”<\/p>\n

Pritchard tallied 12 points and 4 rebounds during the Celtics’ first double-digit defeat of 2026. And while he did his homework on how to best guard the ambidextrous Alexander-Walker, it didn’t stop the first-year Hawk from recording 21 points (and a team-high 8 points in the fourth quarter).<\/p>\n

“I’ve known him for a long time, and I know he’s ambidextrous, and that even surprised me tonight,” Pritchard revealed. “So, I tip my cap to that.”<\/p>\n

Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla echoed that sentiment and admitted his squad was simply outclassed on Wednesday despite trouncing the Hawks by 26 points less than two weeks ago.<\/p>\n

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“Just one of those nights, they played better than us,” he said. “They got the best of us. Just one of those nights for us, (we) didn’t play well and they did, and you kind of move on.”<\/p>\n

Boston allowed a whopping 18 triples to Atlanta, which is about 4 more than the Hawks’ season average and 3 shy of the most 3-pointers the Celtics have allowed in a game all season.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think we played to our standard tonight,” Celtics star Jaylen Brown said during his postgame presser. “It all just comes down to us coming out with the right intention, the right energy, and navigating the season. Tonight wasn’t the best example of that.”<\/p>\n

As a result of the upset loss, the Celtics fell to third place in the Eastern Conference and are 29-18 overall. They’ll get an opportunity to bounce back on Friday night when they host the struggling Sacramento Kings<\/a>, who hold a 12-36 record and are an abysmal 3-20 on the road.<\/p>\n

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This article originally appeared on Celtics Wire: All Payton Pritchard could do was tip his hat at Hawks’ shotmaking<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOSTON \u2014 Boston Celtics point guard Payton Pritchard is the king of shots that make your jaw drop.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":550818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3119,3125,14562,1260,25878,77889,3143,62,169215,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-550817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-atlanta-hawks","9":"tag-boston-celtics","10":"tag-jaylen-brown","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-nickeil-alexander-walker","13":"tag-payton-pritchard","14":"tag-sacramento-kings","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-the-celtics","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115976676524386793","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}