Celtics’ Payton Pritchard reveals what ‘ate away’ at Boston after early playoff exit

The Boston Celtics’ 2025-26 season was a wild rollercoaster that ended in an absolute heartbreaker, and the sting of that collapse hasn’t faded for guard Payton Pritchard.

Despite losing superstar Jayson Tatum to an Achilles injury for most of the campaign, Boston rallied. Behind an incredible regular season from Jaylen Brown, the team defied expectations to secure the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference. But a promising playoff run quickly turned into a nightmare when they blew a 3-1 series lead, culminating in a devastating 109-100 Game 7 elimination loss to the Philadelphia 76ers.

For Pritchard and the rest of the locker room, that historic meltdown left a serious mark.

“I thought regular season we did a great job last year,” Pritchard recently told Chris Forsberg on the Celtics Talk Podcast for NBC Sports Boston. “But obviously in the playoffs, we didn’t have the playoff run we wanted, let a 3-1 lead slip, which, you know, ate away at a lot of us this summer. So, [it] added extra motivation going into the summer to attack it and come back better.”

Pritchard certainly did everything he could to keep the ship afloat. During that first-round matchup, he caught fire. On April 26, he dropped a playoff career-high 32 points off the bench, knocking down six 3-pointers while adding five assists and four rebounds. Even in the crushing Game 7 defeat, Pritchard stepped up, finishing with 13 points, seven assists, and five boards across 39 grueling minutes.

Now, the Celtics enter uncharted territory. In a massive offseason shakeup following the early exit, the front office traded Brown, breaking up a dynamic core. Pritchard acknowledged that losing Brown is tough personally, but he is ready to turn the page. With Tatum returning to health and a revamped roster taking the floor, Boston has plenty of doubters to silence.