Upward mobility in the NBA contractual market is pretty rare. A player's financial destiny is often tied to where he is drafted. Where that player is drafted frequently determines the opportunities he gets early in his career, which in turn determines his rookie extension, what he's eligible for on his next deal and so on.
One team-friendly contract tends to beget several, and nowhere is that truer right now than it is for Payton Pritchard. On Tuesday, he and the Boston Celtics agreed to a two-year, $44.2 million contract extension, according to ESPN. All told, that will guarantee him around $85 million in NBA earnings through the first 10 seasons of his career.
That is by no means a bad outcome, on paper, for the No. 26 pick in the 2020 NBA Draft. Just consider it in comparison to the No. 4 pick, Patrick Williams, who has locked in over $130 million in career earnings thus far. Williams has, at no point, been a better NBA player than Pritchard.
He is now a fringe rotation player for the Chicago Bulls, a lottery team. But he was a high draft pick with great physical tools that tend to get players paid. He played for a Chicago team that, through its own poor management, had few other players worth paying, so the Bulls were free to give him a bloated contract, betting on improvement that hasn't really come.
Pritchard has dealt under almost the exact opposite circumstances. He landed on a loaded Celtics team that couldn't find him consistent minutes. Things got bad enough around the 2023 trade deadline that Pritchard reportedly wanted to be dealt.
Without much of a resume after three years, the Celtics locked him into a four-year, $30 million rookie extension that guaranteed him life-changing wealth, but still represented a pittance compared to what he was actually worth. He won Sixth Man of the Year and a championship before that extension even kicked in. Normally, a standard veteran extension can give a player a 40% raise in the final season of their current deal.
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