Payton Pritchard steps up for Celtics in Game 3 win vs. Knicks, and it goes far beyond his 3-point shooting

NEW YORK — Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said Saturday that the days leading up to Game 3 of their first-round series against the New York Knicks were not difficult whatsoever. Yes, the Celtics were down 2-0 after blowing two 20-point leads at home, but “this is the fun part,” Mazzulla said. “You don’t get into the journey for it to be easy. It’s been dark, but in a good way.”

In this situation, “you just gotta tap into your darkness, and that’s it,” Mazzulla said.

Of course Mazzulla, who has shown the Celtics clips of hyenas and killer whales hunting their prey, would say that. To hear guard Payton Pritchard, though, Boston kept it simple after Game 2. Light, even.

“We watched areas where we could clean up a little bit, but it was really just being more confident and letting it fly,” Pritchard said. “Don’t second-guess a good shot. You come off a ball screen, it’s there, who cares what the outside world is saying? ‘We shoot too many 3s’ — everybody’s all saying that, but if you believe in your shot and you’re able to hit it, then take it confidently.”

Boston did not lack confidence in Game 3. Three days after shooting 10 for 40 from 3-point range at TD Garden, it shot 20 for 40 from 3-point range at Madison Square Garden. No one embodied the team’s approach better than Pritchard, who finished with 23 points on 8-for-16 shooting (5-for-10 from deep) in 35 minutes in the 115-93 win. It was exactly the type of performance that earned him the Sixth Man of the Year award this season.

Pritchard missed his first long bomb, a pull-up in transition over Jalen Brunson. A few possessions later, he found himself wide open after coming off a pair of screens. He was well behind the 3-point line, but he let it fly and gave Boston a 32-16 lead late in the first quarter.

After Game 2, Mazzulla had stressed to the Celtics the importance of finishing quarters and taking care of the ball.

“It’s just controlling the momentum plays,” Pritchard said.

They needed to keep the Knicks out of transition and prevent the breakdowns that gave New York life late in Games 1 and 2. Boston was not perfect in Game 3, but it took care of that stuff. Jaylen Brown committed one live-ball turnover, Jrue Holiday committed two and … that was it. On the last possession of the first quarter, Pritchard dribbled almost the entire length of the court and calmly knocked down a baseline jumper to extend the lead and keep momentum going the Celtics’ way.

Neither Jayson Tatum nor Brown had a particularly efficient or prolific scoring game, but that didn’t matter, in large part because of Pritchard. Late in the second quarter, he attacked Brunson, drew a help defender and created a 3 for Brown. Late in the third, Pritchard isolated against Knicks center Mitchell Robinson on a switch, shook him and nailed a 3. A couple of possessions after that, Pritchard got downhill against Miles McBride, stopped on a dime and made a pretty reverse layup.

“Payton was huge, Payton was great,” Brown said. “[The Knicks] are physical, they got some big guards, wings that like to load up on the ball. The level of physicality is higher, so you gotta be able to make those passes and make those plays, and Payton did a great job of that tonight.”

Pritchard said he was trying to maintain his aggressiveness.

“Any chance I get, attack the paint,” he said, “but always be hunting the 3-ball, obviously.”

His playmaking — and Boston’s excellent defense — relieved the pressure on Tatum and Brown in Game 3. In retrospect, should he have been on the floor during crunch time in Game 2? Maybe, but the more important question now is whether Pritchard will continue to play major minutes going forward. If Mazzulla is focused on pace, space and limiting turnovers, it is worth considering.

After Game 3, the “easy thing to look at,” Mazzulla said, is the Celtics’ shooting numbers. They capitalized on their open looks much better than they did in the first two games, but that wasn’t the whole story: Boston played a cleaner, smarter game. Process-wise, though, the Celtics still had some issues attacking switches, and there were possessions that stalled out into stagnant iso-ball, ending with Tatum or Brown taking a contested jumper in isolation.

The glass-half-empty view of Saturday’s game: Pritchard’s shot-making, New York’s terrible shooting and the rim protection of Al Horford and Kristaps Porzingis masked the fact that, through three games, Boston’s stars do not appear as comfortable as expected on offense.

Outside of the two meltdowns, though, the Celtics have thoroughly outplayed the Knicks, and it just came away with a 22-point victory on the road despite the fact that neither Tatum or Brown got going. They had some inexplicable losses at home in the regular season, and they also had wins that looked a lot like this. The wins were much more frequent.