Something that struck me when I was looking at Pritchard's splits for last season is just how quickly his turnover numbers improved.
With his usage remaining steady and even increasing towards the end of the season...
TO/game |
TO ratio |
AST/TO |
December |
1.8 |
18.4 |
1.22 |
January |
1.4 |
13.4 |
1.92 |
February |
0.7 |
7.7 |
2.60 |
March |
0.4 |
5.9 |
3.33 |
April |
0.8 |
7.8 |
2.08 |
May |
0.4 |
3.8 |
4.33 |
These numbers are admittedly just three different ways to express the same thing, but they all speak of a rookie who was able to very quickly learn, adapt to, and get a handle on the NBA game. The biggest knock I can put on him going forward is his size, but 6'1 with a 6'4 wingspan is roughly on par, or even better than, an awful lot of very successful point guards. I don't see anything about him or his game that could be reasonably be seen as a hard barrier to developing into a quality starter, never mind merely filling a role in the rotation. That's not to say that it's going to happen, but just that he doesn't need to be superlatively good in one thing in order to make up for some insurmountable deficiency elsewhere (ala Isaiah Thomas, who needed to be an elite scorer to compensate for the hard physical limits that being 5'9 puts on a person's ability to play defense, or Grant Williams, whose combined lack of height and lack of speed makes him incredibly difficult to project as anything more than a niche role player unless he can shoot incredibly well or be able to do all the little things like Draymond can.)