Golden State Warriors reported interest in Celtics guard is wildly weird

Plenty of names get thrown into speculation around the trade deadline period, but Wednesday saw a player few would have expected to be linked to the Golden State Warriors.

Payton Pritchard is relatively well known to Warrior fans, with the 24-year-old playing a limited role for the Boston Celtics during last year’s NBA Finals. The 6’1″ guard played nearly 35 minutes across the first two games of the series, before averaging just eight minutes over the last four games.

Reported interest in Boston Celtics’ guard Payton Pritchard is strange from a Golden State Warriors perspective, for more than just the player himself.

According to MassLive’s Brian Robb, the Warriors could be one of a number of teams looking at Pritchard to boost their point-guard stocks.

"“Pritchard’s lack of consistent playing time in the Celtics rotation has unsurprisingly led to a number of playoff teams inquiring about the availability of the reserve guard including the defending champion Golden State Warriors, league sources tell MassLive.”"

With the offseason inclusion of Malcolm Brogdon, Pritchard has seen his minutes nosedive further to just 10 minutes per game. A 41% three-point shooter across his first two seasons in the league, he’s shooting at just 32.9% from beyond the arc in 2022-23.

From a player perspective, the first question is to ask whether Pritchard would even crack the Warriors’ rotation? In a playoff series where Steve Kerr goes only eight or nine players deep, it would hard to envisage Pritchard fitting in. He’d be nice depth, but that’s exactly the role he’s playing in Boston currently.

With that in mind, what would Golden State give up in order to get him? He doesn’t move the needle enough to move any of James Wiseman, Jonathan Kuminga, Moses Moody, heck, even Patrick Baldwin Jr. Are the Celtics accepting a duo of JaMychal Green and Ryan Rollins? Highly doubtful.

There’s also the important aspect of it being the Warriors and Celtics — are these two teams, last year’s finalists who could well meet again, really going to orchestrate a mid-season trade? Even for a bench piece in Pritchard that seems far fetched.

Pritchard’s link to the Warriors is weird to say the least. If Golden State want a third string point-guard for added depth, they could sign Ty Jerome to the vacant 15th roster spot without having to give up anything of value in return.