Payton Pritchard plays basketball with the erudite confidence of your favorite professor going over the syllabus on the first day of class. He doesn’t take threes; he swaggers into them. He doesn’t finish at the rim; he concludes at it. He doesn’t play defense; he menaces it.

Like a sous vide steak, the surface doesn’t look all that appetizing, and then you cut into it. 9.6 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 3.4 assists doesn’t exactly scream “good player.” Instead, they use their inside voice to affirmatively declare “good bench guard.” That alone is a boon for the 26th pick, getting someone that can play solid minutes and isn’t unplayable in the NBA Playoffs is a win, but Pritchard is more than that.

It’s not just the deep threes and pesky full-court pressure. Last year, Pritchard legitimately drove winning.

The Celtics battered teams with him on the floor, outscoring them by 12.23 points per 100 possessions, a better figure than when Pritchard was off. On a team as deep and as talented as the Celtics, Pritchard made them better. Much of that damage was with the now infamous Tatum and the bench lineups, but that does a bit of a disservice to Pritchard’s rapidly diversifying game.