https://youtu.be/_tw4NfrN5jo
We might be only a week and a half into the season, but it’s NEVER too early to start obsessing over which players were the “steals” of the draft. This process of determining which front offices displayed extreme amounts of prescience in cashing in their non-lottery draft picks, and which front offices completely bungled the process and should all be fired immediately, is just as much a part of basketball as dribbling or taking jumpshots. And once the list of “draft steals” has been OFFICIALLY compiled, everybody can use it to say that somebody picked 48th should obviously have gone in the lottery and every GM who passed on the guy is a major-league moron. This often includes the GM who drafted the dude, because they could have used an earlier pick to draft him at a higher spot.
Payton Pritchard is shaping up to be one of those steals. 1/10th of the way through the season, he is one of the most productive players drafted outside of the lottery, and it’s not like he was just barely outside the lottery, either – he was picked 26th overall. Danny Ainge, they say, is at it again. Who cares if their other first-round pick, Aaron Nesmith, isn’t doing much? That guy probably was a project. Pritchard, being a four-year college player, was not a project. He was ready to come in and be a draft-day steal from day one. Ainge is GM’ing circles around all these other buffoons with his SICK drafting ability (Guerschon Yabusele waves hello).
Also, I want to let everybody know that I also knew that Pritchard would be a steal. How did I did I come to this conclusion, which required uncommon amounts of foresight, you ask? Simple. I saw that he averaged 20 PPG per game as a senior, and I just knew. 20 PPG per game scorers in college are always NBA-caliber. Exhibit 1: Nate Wolters. Exhibit 2: Erick Green. I rest my case.