BOSTON — Jordan Walsh checked in in the first quarter feeling some nerves in his first real rotation minutes in the NBA. He’d prepared for this moment all season, shifting to a complementary role with the Maine Celtics that would better translate to his eventual jump to the NBA. Now, after Joe Mazzulla called him to the scorer’s table, Walsh told himself, “it’s just basketball. You’ve been doing it your whole life.”
Payton Pritchard felt differently when he subbed into an NBA game for the first time in 2020. First, the Celtics played in front of mostly empty arenas at the height of the COVID pandemic, so a large crowd of fans didn’t anticipate his every shot like they did on Wednesday with Walsh.