Payton Pritchard

Pritchard won Sixth Man of the Year for 2024-25, a season after winning a championship as part of Boston's eighteenth title in 2024. He then had the best year of his career in 2025-26 — 17.0 points, 5.2 assists and 3.9 rebounds, with 89 percent free-throw shooting, his best since 2021-22 — while starting 50 of the 79 games he played before moving back to the bench late in the year. He is a useful corrective to the idea that a rotation is fixed: he spent four seasons as a deep reserve, largely unchanged as a player, before the role and the production finally arrived together. The shooting was always there; the minutes were the variable.