Oregon Professional Athletes

Two Oregon Ducks made NBA headlines this week — one by securing his future, the other by providing a cautionary tale about talking before you play.

Payton Pritchard: Money, Declarations, and Questions

The biggest Oregon story of the week started before the games even tipped off. Payton Pritchard locked in a two-year, $44.2 million extension with the Boston Celtics, with first-year money jumping to $21.2 million and a mutual option for the 2029-30 season. For a guard who requested a trade three years ago and has since helped Boston win a championship, it's a full-circle moment — and Pritchard has been emphatic about where he wants to be.

Coach Joe Mazzulla has publicly declared Pritchard a key to the Celtics' success alongside Jayson Tatum, pointing to a specific trait in his game that Boston will rely on. ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins, meanwhile, predicts a big individual season for Pritchard — but stops short of buying the Celtics as title contenders overall, delivering a pointed "hell no" on that front.

On the court, the early returns are mixed. Pritchard dropped 17 points in a 113-121 loss to the Pistons on Oct. 20, but managed just 4 points — albeit with a +8 plus-minus — in a 107-103 win over the Knicks on Oct. 23. Questions are already surfacing about whether his role has expanded to match his new paycheck, with Boston.com noting that his on-court responsibilities haven't visibly grown despite the deal. His starting position remains unsettled after a preseason largely spent coming off the bench.

Dillon Brooks: All Talk, Rough Start

If Pritchard's week was complicated, Dillon Brooks' was a disaster — self-inflicted and on multiple fronts.

Brooks arrived in Phoenix this offseason with his heel-villain persona fully intact. He took pointed shots at former Sun Kevin Durant, thanking Suns owner Mat Ishbia for "cleaning up that stench" before he arrived — a reference to the team's culture reset following Durant's departure to Houston. He also erected a "Kingblocker 9000" billboard near Madison Square Garden to troll LeBron James ahead of his New York appearance.

Then Phoenix played its season opener at Portland on Oct. 22, and the Blazers had a different kind of response: a 124-83 blowout. Brooks finished with 10 points, 4 rebounds, and a -29 plus-minus across 26 minutes. The 41-point margin made the pre-game theater land considerably worse than intended.

Brooks has made a career out of the antagonist role — it genuinely worked last season, when he helped the Suns reach the playoffs after their roster overhaul. But there's a fine line between calculated villain and distraction, and this week's sequence tested it.

The Oregon Picture

Between Pritchard's contract, his early role uncertainty, and Brooks' opening-night implosion, Oregon's two most prominent NBA alumni are navigating very different pressures. Pritchard's trajectory remains firmly upward even if the first week raised eyebrows. Brooks has the personality and the pedigree to back up the noise — but Portland made clear the league will be happy to do the talking back.

Payton Pritchard is staying in Boston — and the Oregon product is poised to be more important to the Celtics than ever before.

The seven-year veteran agreed to a two-year, $44.2 million fully guaranteed contract extension ahead of the 2026-27 season, with a mutual option tacked on for the 2029-30 campaign. The deal, first reported by ESPN's Shams Charania, keeps the former Duck under contract through the end of the decade and represents the most significant financial commitment of Pritchard's career.

It's hard to argue Boston overpaid. Pritchard set career highs across the board last season — 17.0 points, 5.2 assists, and 3.9 rebounds per game — and did so while earning the Sixth Man of the Year Award and contributing to an NBA championship. With Jaylen Brown no longer in the picture, he's now expected to slide into a full-time starting role, making the $44.2 million figure look like a relative bargain by current market standards. CBS Sports called it exactly that.

Not everyone agreed with the structure. One anonymous NBA executive suggested Pritchard left money on the table — that he could have commanded a richer deal had he bet on himself and hit free agency. But insiders pushed back hard, pointing to the security, the mutual option, and the fit in Boston as clear upsides for Pritchard's side of the ledger. Sports Illustrated framed it as a genuine win-win: the Celtics lock in a proven contributor at a manageable rate; Pritchard gets security, continuity, and a starring role.

Coach Joe Mazzulla didn't mince words after the signing, sending what was described as a powerful public endorsement of his guard's value to the franchise. Pritchard himself took to social media with a message that reflected the weight of the moment — he's the second-longest tenured Celtic behind only Jayson Tatum, and he's spent his entire NBA career in green.

Tatum was among the NBA stars who reacted publicly to the extension, a signal of just how embedded Pritchard has become in Boston's locker room culture.

The early preseason returns are encouraging, too. In a 114-93 win over the Charlotte Hornets, Pritchard racked up 11 assists against zero turnovers off the bench — a performance that had analysts wondering if an expanded playmaking role could be the next evolution of his game. ESPN's Kendrick Perkins went further, predicting Pritchard will emerge as the Celtics' second-leading scorer this season.

Around the Rest of the Duck NBA Alumni

Oregon's other NBA representatives generated modest noise during the preseason week. Dillon Brooks, now with the Phoenix Suns, appeared in multiple storylines — he offered a public endorsement of teammate Khaman Maluach after the young big held his own against Victor Wembanyama, and he sat down with Michael Porter Jr. on the NBPA's PLYR2PLYR series to explain why he leans into his league-wide "villain" reputation (spoiler: off the court, he says, he's "super chill"). Brooks also drew attention after getting into a preseason dustup with Detroit's John Collins.

For Duck fans, though, this week belonged to Pritchard. The kid from West Linn, Oregon — who walked on at Oregon before becoming a star — just signed the biggest contract of his life, in the city that's embraced him longest. The breakout wasn't a fluke. Boston made sure of it.