About two years ago, frustrated with a lack of playing time, Celtics guard Payton Pritchard wanted a trade out of Boston. Now he’s the team’s most prized substitute player and a leading contender to win the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year award, just as Chris Forsberg of NBC Sports Boston predicted before the season started.
“I’m stunned that, a quarter of the way through the season, he’s the definitive favorite,” Forsberg said. “Even I didn’t expect that.”
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So far this season, his fifth with the Celtics, Pritchard is averaging career highs in points, minutes played and field goal percentage.
Last season, Mahlon Williams, a sports memorabilia businessman and owner of I Love Boston Sports in Braintree, started a conversation with Pritchard’s representatives. On Dec. 1, a new marketing partnership went live featuring hats, hoodies and T-shirts.
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Most of the merchandise has Pritchard’s likeness paired with the words, “Pritch Please,” a play on words that some might find risqué.
“There are a lot of people buying this who don’t understand where the initial reference came from,” Williams said. “You’ve got grandmothers and Aunt Patty from Billerica buying it, and they love it.”
What made Williams feel confident the words would work before he went ahead and printed them on apparel was that his team handed out signs with the phrase and fans proudly waved those signs at Celtics home games.
Since the start of December, they’ve sold thousands of items, at times struggling to keep up with online demand. That action is expected to intensify in the days leading up to Christmas, particularly if Pritchard continues to put together a career season.
