Joe Mazzulla explains why he played Payton Pritchard instead of Grant Williams

Although the Celtics have arguably the deepest team in the entire NBA, coach Joe Mazzulla keeps a tight rotation of around 7-8 players who regularly get minutes.

That’s why it was surprising when Payton Pritchard, who sat out eight of the Celtics’ first 14 playoff games and is averaging under six minutes per game in the six games he’s played, logged 12 minutes on Wednesday night.

“I think in the beginning, Payton gave us an opportunity with his shooting, with his playmaking and pick and role defense,” Mazzulla said.

Pritchard went scoreless and only took two shot attempts. Both were 3-pointers.

The fact that Grant Williams was not part of the rotation is less surprising. His minutes have been consistently down this postseason. He’s eighth on the team with an average of 12.9 minutes per game. That’s less than half of the 27.3 minutes per game he earned during last year’s playoff run.

Mazzulla was asked why a player who played such a key role in last year’s Eastern Conference Finals against Miami didn’t get a single minute in the first game of this year’s rematch.

“We have a plan to use the depth that we need in order to give us the lineups we think can really help us,” Mazzulla said. “Obviously in the playoffs where minutes are expanding you look to play 7 or 8 guys which we’ve kind of done throughout. … Like we said before, Grant is always going to be ready and we’ve built a lot of depth in our lineup to where we can go a lot of different ways.”

Exactly one year ago Friday, Williams scored 19 points on 5-7 shooting and made both of his 3-pointers during Game 2 of the 2022 Eastern Conference Finals as the Celtics tied the series at one apiece.

The Celtics are in the same spot now as they were heading into that game, down 0-1 to Miami after dropping Game 1 at home.

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The post Joe Mazzulla explains why he played Payton Pritchard instead of Grant Williams appeared first on Boston.com.