[Grossman] During the offseason, Payton Pritchard recruited Division II and III basketball players to play him at a high school gym in Cape Cod. Pritchard goes through 150 possessions a day, and if the defenders hold him under 60%, he pays for them to “eat like kings” at Chipotle.
![[Grossman] During the offseason, Payton Pritchard recruited Division II and III basketball players to play him at a high school gym in Cape Cod. Pritchard goes through 150 possessions a day, and if the defenders hold him under 60%, he pays for them to “eat like kings” at Chipotle.](/media/site-23/111/001-0a80f4f7.gif)
posted by u/Goosedukee · 2026-10-26 13:55 UTC
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/50259828/payton-pritchard-celtics-iso-king
It's 6:45 in the morning in the middle of June, and Pritchard has just walked into the humid gym of his choice, at a high school on the southeastern tip of Cape Cod. He'd pulled up to school grounds 10 minutes earlier but had to wait outside while his trainer, Michael Soares, phoned a staffer to open the locked double doors.
This gym, like most of the unglamorous gyms Pritchard handpicks for his offseason workouts, doesn't boast amenities such as air-conditioning. A few years ago, a heat wave slammed West Linn, Oregon, where he grew up. Outside, temperatures ticked up to 115 degrees, and it grew only more tropical indoors, hitting 120 in the gym at his high school alma mater, where he was conducting workouts. Pritchard came armed with extra towels because even the ball was sweating that day.
The conditions in his Cape Cod accommodations are temperate by comparison. And anyway, Pritchard likes the muck.
The muck is why he has been recruiting Division II and III basketball players, international guys and hometown buddies to high school gyms for years now. They're not exactly a ragtag motley crew, but they're not polished professionals either, and Pritchard figures that makes them hungry. He'll pay for their gas to drive down from Boston to the Cape, or their flights to cross the country or an ocean, because they can be counted on to play feisty, relentless one-on-one defense.
Today, as ever, it's death by repetition for Pritchard. Bump his defender, create space, shoot. Beat his defender, get to his spot, shoot. React to his defender chasing him. Drive to the basket because his defender is chasing him from too far behind.
About 30 minutes in, Bruce Saintilus, recently of Division III Clark University and one of Pritchard's defenders for the summer, is the one chasing Pritchard. He's feeling himself, certain that he has forced Pritchard into a bad angle. But Saintilus runs past the basket, so he doesn't get to see Pritchard attempt an awkward layup. Still, Saintilus knows. He shouts over -- to Soares, or maybe to the basketball gods for forsaking him and his defense -- "Did that really go in?"
It did.
And so it goes for close to two hours about three times a week throughout the summer. Pritchard will do 150 possessions in his elaborate dance around the basketball court -- the block, the elbow, the other elbow, the 3-point line, the corner, the wing, the high slot, the middle, the opposite slot -- going one-on-one versus a rotating cast of defenders. They'll get breaks, he won't, and if Pritchard shoots under 60% on the day, his defenders eat like kings at Chipotle and then send him the bill.
He considers it a small price to pay for the thousands of live looks he gets over the summer, for the chance to square up against one man and try to best him. And then do it again and again, filing it all away in his mental archive. How much basketball data mining is too much? The limit does not exist.
Original link: https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/50259828/payton-pritchard-celtics-iso-king
## Top comments
1. u/WasDavid · 2026-10-26 14:21 UTC
I know enough D2 and D3 players who'll be psyched to get free Chipotle, why are people hating lmao
2. u/titusandroidus · 2026-10-26 14:41 UTC
He pays for their transportation and buys a meal. They get to say they trained with a NBA player and maybe improve their own game in their journey.
Literally, I don't see any issue with it.
3. u/shes_a_gdb · 2026-10-26 14:51 UTC
They get to train with an NBA player and find out their dreams of making the NBA has been crushed.
4. u/beast_scyther · 2026-10-26 15:04 UTC
Yup, get to see first hand that the ol D3 to professional pipeline is sending them straight to a career in accounting
(I should have skipped college sports and gone straight to accounting tbh)
5. u/Aksudiigkr · 2026-10-26 15:20 UTC
Wouldn’t you go straight to accounting either way once you graduate or what did you do?
6. u/beast_scyther · 2026-10-26 15:42 UTC
I just mean I should have spent more time and energy preparing for my actual professional life and not my dream professional life of being an athlete. Not that I didn’t benefit from it and it’s not all bad at all, but looking back I’d change some priorities for sure!
Also not like many people don’t study hard and excel at athletics, but I think my discipline was not at that level!
7. u/heims30 · 2026-10-26 15:58 UTC
Hey, my man - you’ve got 40 damn years to be an accountant.
You only get so many to be a college athlete.
Don’t regret how you did it; you got to do what a lot of us only wish we could have.
Also, you probably do quite well in mens league, now too, so the dream continues!
8. u/bostonsportsmafioso · 2026-10-26 17:52 UTC
Excel at Athletics should be the name for the D3 -> Accounting pipeline
9. u/JalapenoPopPoop · 2026-10-26 16:56 UTC
I only had D3 offers and as soon as I found out there's no scholarships in D3 I just went well that's a wrap on my playing days. Not gonna let where I go to get my education be decided by a cashless offer, the scholarship is the main benefit
10. u/RussiniTouchedMe · 2026-10-26 17:05 UTC
There’s also the benefit of getting into schools you couldn’t have without basketball. Probably weren’t the same schools you were looking at tho
11. u/JalapenoPopPoop · 2026-10-26 17:09 UTC
Yeah for me it was the opposite. I had the option of going to better schools whose degree would carry more weight but not playing, or taking a D3 offer to go to random schools no one had ever heard of where everything about the school was lower quality just to keep playing and getting no benefit out of it.
12. u/RussiniTouchedMe · 2026-10-26 17:17 UTC
That’s the right choice then.
Big difference in D3 between the UAA and NESCAC schools vs the ones that use sports to drive enrollment
13. u/dslk820z · 2026-10-26 15:04 UTC
They see what it takes to be an nba player and can either give up or work harder.
14. u/Kiriegloom · 2026-10-26 17:29 UTC
After a certain point, you know you won't make it. Either the athleticism or skill gap is insurmountable. The real answer is you see what it takes to be an NBA player and realize you should've been born better and/or put in more work when you were a kid. It's not like other professions where you get decades to improve. You only have a handful of years until teams don't even look at you anymore
15. u/hereforthefeast · 2026-10-26 15:06 UTC
POV of those kids playing against PP
16. u/eugenesbluegenes · 2026-10-26 15:33 UTC
He's playing against children‽
17. u/SoaplessTitanic · 2026-10-26 15:29 UTC
I mean it probably saves them a lot of money in the long run by hopefully getting them to take their education more seriously
18. u/jboggin · 2026-10-26 15:31 UTC
I don't have an issue with it, but "eat like Kings at Chipotle" is an admittedly hilarious thing to say.
19. u/Turbo2x · 2026-10-26 17:10 UTC
I don't really get the hype but a lot of people - especially young athletes - seem to love it. I hope they got their Chipotle.
20. u/welmoe · 2026-10-26 16:21 UTC
Right? At most, the bill is maybe $50, which is chump change for PP.