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Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
BONUS: Jayson Tatum’s PLAYOFF Ramp-Up - Where Can Get? | Best Regular Season Ever?
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Is this the most exciting regular season Boston Celtics fans have witnessed since the turn of the century? John Karalis of Celtics On SI dives into a bonus mailbag and examines rising expectations as Jayson Tatum ramps up playoff minutes after recovering from an Achilles injury, weighing both the risks and remarkable speed of his return. He highlights memorable surprises like Hugo Gonzalez’s breakout potential and Baylor Scheierman's clutch shooting, all while exploring the emotional highs and lingering anxieties that define this must-win year in Boston. Key discussions include national TV analysts’ coverage and why bench players often provide more insightful in-game commentary than big-name stars, plus the evolving fan dynamic between Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Whether you’re relishing the Celtics’ unexpected run or bracing for the next twist, John Karalis unpacks the season’s standout storylines and offers insider observations on Boston’s path forward. Don’t miss this energi...
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Now on the Locked on Celtics podcast, the Mini Mailbag what can we expect from Jayson Tatum heading into the playoffs? And is this the best regular season ever? It's a bonus podcast here on this Monday on the Locked on Celtics podcast. So thank you for making this show your first listen every day. I do appreciate you being here every Monday through Friday. Bonus podcasts like this throughout the week when they play on weekends. Tons and tons of Celtics content, so make sure you're subscribed to ever get your podcast, watch this show on YouTube. I'm John Corrales, beat writer covering the Celtics for Sports illustrated Celtics on SI and I've been covering this team for 20 years doing this podcast for 10. Today's Today's Show I'm Leaving that in is brought to you by FanDuel, giving you a way to turn the energy, your college basketball energy into a bigger potential win with the college basketball College basketball parlay Profit boost. Man, that's a real tongue Twister. Heading to FanDuel.com to get started. It's fandom.com FanDuel play your game. This bonus podcast the way I do Mini Mailbags is one question per segment because the bonus podcasts are a little shorter or they're they should be. I just keep on yapping blah blah blah. But I get one question per segment this time with a bonus podcast bonus question at the end because it's a silly one, but we're going to dive right in. You can ask those Questions@john corralis.com Mailbag the first one is about Jason Tatum's expectations from Bo P. What can we expect from Jason Tatum ramping up to the playoffs? You know, I'll be completely honest with you. I don't even know anymore what to expect. I, I've been burned all season long by giving my actual expectations. I sit here, I analyze, I, I try to be real. I've said this before. I'm not going to sugarcoat when I think things aren't aren't going to go well. I'm not going to go overboard or try not to when I think things are going great. There's always going to be something, a mitigating factor or an, you know, an unexpected surprise. But Tatum's already far ahead of where he's going to be. You asked me this question before he comes back. It's a completely different answer. But the question now the answer now the ramp up each week should be a few more minutes per game, right? Every three, four games you can tack on two, three more minutes, right. Four more minutes, five more minutes, which we've done. Right. We've seen four games at 27 minutes. Now. The last this past game was 32 minutes. And so the next couple of games, 32 minutes is what we should expect. And then after that, 34, 35. I. I have been saying that I don't expect Tatum to play full playoff minutes, and I don't. I still don't. Just because my brain can't let me get there to say Tatum is fully back after 10 months of an Achilles injury. And when the playoffs come around, he's going to be playing 44 minutes a game and, you know, 42 minutes a game, and that's going to be it. I just have such a hard time believing that he will go from not playing NBA basketball for 10 months and then a month and a half later he's playing playoff minutes. So I still, it makes sense to me that he won't get to normal. Tatum, playoff level minutes, 35 minutes is still really good. So there's going to be probably a little bit of, maybe a little. He's going to be on a normal regular season rotation while everybody else is on a playoff rotation. But I don't. Maybe not maybe, maybe that's going to change. I just don't want to put too much stress on Tatum. The last thing we want, the absolute last thing that we want is a repeat of last year. You just don't want to push him too hard. In no matter what scenario, his health is always going to be of premium importance, and everybody knows that. Everybody understands that. What I don't want is the. It's the conference finals and Tatum is feeling that soreness and it's like, but we're so close. We're so close. And you push him an extra five minutes and in that 41st minute, something happens. I am so afraid of that, but I've been afraid of other things and it hasn't come to fruition. So my expectation for him ramping up to the playoffs and I'm going beyond what my normal expectation would be is that he gets to a 36 to 38 minute minutes restriction, quote, unquote restriction, which 38 minutes is not really a restriction, but in the playoffs it might be. I'm gonna say he gets to 36 to 38 minutes and it's kind of just a play it by ear, kind of feel things out and see how it goes. But that, that's much more. That's much more than I ever, ever would have expected from Tatum. So I continue to say I'm so incredibly impressed by how, how quickly and how thoroughly he's come back. You know, I've been, I've been looking at some of the film from last year compared to this year. I'm trying to find similar plays. And, you know, my, my goal was to write about it and say, okay, here's, here's where he is maybe not as explosive. And I'm seeing like little bits and I'm, I'm. It's so minuscule right now that I'm not even sure I can write about it because it's so hard to kind of discern. I might still just because. And I need to do a deeper dive. But the point of this is I'm just so impressed that he's back and that the, the lack of explosiveness is still mildly noticeable but not glaring. So that part is, is kind of wild to me. We're going to come back with the question of is this the best regular season ever in Celtics history? Today's show is brought to you by FanDuel. College basketball is non stop. The big games, tight spreads, momentum swings every single night. Everybody's watching college basketball now. I've been saying it. I've seen these guys watching college basketball after games in the Celtics locker room. Everybody's invested. 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Go to indeed.compodcast right now. Terms and conditions apply. Let them know that we sent you. There will be a box to let them know that need to hire. This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Thank you for making Lockdown Celtics your first listen every day here on the number one sports podcast network on the planet. Now you can take your Everydayer status to the next level by joining the Everydayer club. Use the code March. You get your first month free. You get access to our Discord server, live chats. You get audio ad free audio which is compatible everywhere. All the major podcast apps use the code March for a month free. And if you sign up before the NCAA tournament tips off on Thursday, you can compete in the men's and women's brackets pool on Discord. Winner gets a hundred dollars in locked on merchandise. So go check this that out. All right, let's get back to the questions here on this bonus podcast. Questions come in@john corralis.com mailbag Paulo says, from a Celtics fan perspective, is this the best regular season ever or let's say since the turn of the century? 2020, 2008 and 2024 were very similar. A lot of fun but also a lot of pressure. I was totally on board with the enjoy the season mantra, but deep down I couldn't avoid the anxiety of a must win season. This year I'm fully enjoying the regular season and I feel like a kid in a candy store game after game after game. So I love this because it it's perfect about expectations and how we judge things versus expectations. If the Celtics, if Tatum didn't get hurt and the Celtics were the second seed and they were was it five games now behind? Four and a half games. Four games behind the Pistons. Oh, that's right. The Pistons lost last night. We'd be saying, this is so disappointing. We'd be like, well, how are you only a 44 win team. This is a. We expected you to be a 55, maybe a 60 win team, you know, and. But now when Tatum's not there and the Expectations are low, 44 win team, second seed in the East. It's like, wow. Yeah, man. Best regular season ever. Let's talk about it. Let's have that conversation. Is it the Joe Missoula answer? Is it kind of depends on you. If you think it's the best regular season ever, then, yes, that's the answer. If you are the kid in the candy store and you're enjoying the, the, the wins and the surprises and the. I can't believe Baylor Shireman is hitting clutch threes and doing a thumbs up and all of that stuff, that is, that is kind of up to you. And this is the beauty of, you know, being in, you know, in the world. And the downside of being in the world, what I think is the best, somebody else thinks is the worst. And they're going to be people who are listening. If it's you, hey, this is, this is totally your call too, who say the Celtics aren't going to win a championship this year. They're going to do all of this stuff. And yeah, it's fun, but also, they blew it. They botched it. They should have just tanked. They are transformational players in this, in this draft. You should have just tanked and gone for one of the top picks. And then when Tatum comes back, you have Tatum and Brown and Derrick White and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and one of these guys and you can really stretch things out. It's not an invalid argument to make. So people who think that are going to say this isn't the best season. I, I understand why you would say that. And I think, I think there is a case to be made for that because it is based on. I expected something else, right? If you walk into a casino and you have $20 on you and you say, I don't expect to make anything, and you throw $20 into a slot machine and it spits out 500, you're like, Whoa, unbelievable. If you walk in with 500 and you leave with 500, you're like, okay, no problem. If you walk in with a thousand and you leave with 500, it's like, oh, man, that. That was brutal. That was tough. So you can leave with 500. Three different scenarios, and it changes how you see things. We're in that 20 bucks. And yeah, it is enjoyable. It's super fun because it doesn't matter. It honestly doesn't matter what happens. Now. I've said this before on the podcast. I think maybe some people have, have shifted their expectations because, well, we're here now. It's the second, you know, the Celtics are the second seed. Pistons at, at the top. They don't look great necessarily. Knicks casp. You know, like, people are like, look at, look at this East. Let's forget what we said before. Let's just go for it and get to the NBA Finals. And then once you get there, who knows, everybody in the west is going to be hitting each other with two by fours the whole time. Maybe you can sneak it, maybe get a championship out of this thing. And I agree, I do agree. But also I'm at the point where it's. Everything has gone so well. That part of me, it does expect another shooter drop like it. I don't know if we've been, if this is one big setup. Has it been a long con? Has this been a. Are we on a prank show that the, the joke is gonna fall at some point? Are we at the end of the show and, you know, I don't know, Dwight Howard's gonna come out from behind the screen. I figured Dwight Howard's immature enough to do something like that, but, you know, like, like that kind of thing. And we were like, oh, man, I can't believe that this is what, what, what it turned out to be. So I'm, I'm just kind of like, anything from here is gravy for me. This is just. It's been wild, it's been fun. It's been fun to cover. It's been fun to see people's reactions. It's been fun to be around a mostly positive fan base. I still am not a fan of how people choose sides between Jalen and Jason. You don't have to do that. It's not about that. When I write something about Jason, it's not about putting Jalen down. And when I write something about Jalen, it's not putting. But it's not about putting Jason down. It's just in certain things we talk about certain, certain people. Like Jason Tatum's coming back and his, his comeback has been amazing. So right now, the spotlight is very much on Jason. Jalen has had the spotlight on him plenty this season, and he will again. We don't have to do the fighting each other thing, but that's still an element of this. So that does that does take away from the most fun regular season? Because I still have to look at, well, you know, you hate Jason and you hate Jalen. It's been really funny to see comments in the YouTube page where I'm like, I'm seeing, oh, you, you hate Jalen Brown. And then when I go on to Twitter, it's, you love Jalen Brown, you hate Jason. Like, okay, I guess I'm doing something right. If everybody thinks I hate their favorite player, then maybe I'm doing something right. But that definitely takes away from some of the enjoyment for me. But this has still been a super, super fun regular season. Think about all of the different elements. Cada's improvement. You know, Baylor, Ugo, I never expected, never mind second seed. I never expected Ugo Gonzalez to be, you know, my brightest light. Looking into the future. Like, who. Who saw that coming? It's like, okay, Ugo Gonzalez, kid from Spain, 19 years old. We'll, we'll see, we'll see what he's got. But here he is showing me things that I'm like, wow, yeah, all right, I'm in. I'm in on this kid. That's super fun. A lot of stuff is super fun. Seeing Joe Missoula get the credit that he deserves. Super, super fun. All of that stuff has been great, great, great, great, great. So 90 positive, 10 negative, which in the grand scheme of things is kind of an amazing, an amazing percentage because you're never going to get that. Nothing's 100% positive to get. I think 90% positive somewhere around there is, is a huge win for this season. So soak it up, enjoy it if you're enjoying it. Don't let anybody get you down. Don't let anybody get in your head and make it something that it's not. This has been a super, super fun regular season. We're going to come back, we'll talk about one of the things that maybe some people don't enjoy. National TV coverage. Just a minute. Today's show is brought to you by TurboTax. It's tax time. For a lot of us, the old way of doing taxes is. It's a lot. Trying to book an appointment that's not the most convenient. Sitting in a waiting room with a stack of papers emailing back and forth and wondering if they really get your situation. Yeah. But this year you're getting a major upgrade. Intuit TurboTax now has in person locations nationwide. You can meet face to face with a real tax expert and your documents get uploaded straight to your. You your your TurboTax app on the spot and just like that you are done. Your TurboTax expert works to get every dollar you deserve and while you get real time notifications as your day, as you just go about your day, it's the relief of walking in and meeting a real person and walking out knowing your taxes are being handled right. Head to turbotax.com local to find a store near you and book your appointment. Thanks for making Lockdown Celtics your first listen every day. It's the number one sports it's the number one Celtics podcast on the number one sports podcasting network. I'd want to thank everybody for making it those things. It's because of you. It is because of you. 100 you listening, watching, being here every day. Otherwise it's just me talking into a microphone in my office and I'll probably just do that anyway because I like to hear myself talk. But otherwise I do enjoy being here for you and thank you for all of that. Let's get back to the questions here. The bonus podcast here. One question per segment. This is going to be two questions of the segment. John corrales.com mailbag to ask your questions. Edward is curious about your thoughts on national TV coverage. Mike Breen is the standard and there are a few others like Ian Eagle that are great play by play voices, but the analysts are for the large part atrocious. Give me a coach or an end of the bench guy like Scal any day. So Edward, I think a few things are going on when it comes to national TV coverage. First of all, I understand where you're coming from because sometimes I listen to some of these analysts and I'm like, what? What are you doing? I know you're smarter than that. But here's the thing. I think one thing that we have to realize. It's not for me and it's not for you. If you're listening to this podcast or watching this podcast, you're probably more advanced than most people who watch these games. And one thing you have to be careful about, and I've talked to Scal a little bit about this and I've talked to other analysts about it. You can't go too technical on stuff because it goes over a lot of people's heads. You got to be careful. And I love that some people throw in some of the terminology here and there just to just to give those of us who understand it a little something extra. But you have to kind of keep it simple. It's, it's like pop music. You Know, it's like chain restaurants. You can't go too crazy. You know, the fancy, fancy restaurants. That's us on podcasts. Some of us get really, really fancy with our podcasts, and they're the ones that are doing the, the chef, like, you know, the intense. The stuff you see on the shows and in cooking shows and like, we're, you're emulsifying stuff. You always emulsify something on a real cooking show. And that's what we do here with our, our stats and our takes. But on the, on the national TV broadcast, you gotta, you gotta keep it to a certain level. So you have to understand that it's a certain amount of personality, it's a certain amount of excitement. You have to keep the, the analysis to a certain level. So that's, that kind of affects things. You have guys like. Also, let me, let me say this. You need a lot of name recognition, you know, so that's why Reggie Miller is out there. I'm assuming Reggie Miller is one of the guys that people are talking about because he gets, you know, he gets a few hits here and there, and I've certainly given him some. You need the name recognition. You need the popular players. You need people out there that people will say, oh, I know him. I'm gonna listen to him. And so that's part of it. And those guys aren't always, you know, they bring their own baggage to the games, right? Like, Reggie Miller is never going to be all in on the Knicks, right? He's going to have his things or the Celtics people that, you know, you think, you think certain guys, like from the Miami Heat are going to be like, excited to talk about the Celtics. It's hard to put these things away when you become an analyst because you've been a competitor for so long, you bring these kind of biases into your, into, into your, into your workplace. So there's, there's some of that going on. The coaches, coaches can explain things and, and let you know what's happening. And they've coached for so many different places that maybe there, some of those biases go away. Maybe some of them are auditioning for, for jobs. So there's some of that. The end of bench guys. This, this goes into why certain superstars aren't good coaches at the end of bench guys have to know so much like, like Scowl had has to understand the game at a different level than Jason Tatum. Just because Jason Tatum can do certain things. Not to say that Jason Tatum doesn't understand the game at a high level. He certainly, certainly does. But the end of bench guys have to think about things that maybe Tatum doesn't or Luca or, you know, Jokic. They're. They're just things that, when you're that good, you don't have to pay attention to some of the things that the end of bench guys do. So that. That does add to a broadcast. I get it. I think, by and large, the. I don't see the national broadcasts as. I don't see them with the same biases that I think some fans do, because a lot of times praising the other team comes off as something different. So, for example, I tweeted out in the OKC game, Alex Caruso made a steal, and I was like, wow, that steal was sick. And somebody actually came back at me and says, you don't have to share all your thoughts. You know, even if it was, you don't have to say it. And so when a national analyst, if the Celtics are playing, you know, the. The warriors coming up, and somebody in the warriors did something great, and the analysts were like, wow, this is great, and blah, blah, blah going on and on about the Warriors, Celtics fans are going to sit there and say, man, they can't stop glazing the warriors, man, they. They're so biased. But when it comes to the Celtics and they're talking about, man, this, Baylor Shireman and so on and so forth, this Ugo Gonzalez and Namish Kada and Jalen Brown, and you're looking at it, it's like, finally, finally we're getting some love while warriors fans are like, oh, my God, will they shut up about the Celtics? They're so biased. We gotta take a little look at ourselves in some of these things and, and understand that when somebody's praising the other team, it doesn't mean that they're in love with the other team. They're giving that team praise the same way they're giving the Celtics praise. And who knows? Is it all always equal time during a game? No. Do some people bring a certain fandom to their. To their job? Maybe, but it's. It's definitely not as bad as you think. And as a person who has separated himself from everything, I. I kind of see. I see the broadcast as like a little bit, a little less than what you think it might be. So. But if you want to mute it, mute it. That's fine too. You don't have to listen to it. There's generally another option. Or, you know, well, we'll figure something out. Maybe I'll do more talking during Games and stuff like that, like I did a couple weeks ago. So that. All right, my last question here, just to sneak this in because I thought this was hilarious from Shadow Styles. You're right handed, right? I asked because when you make gestures with that hand, the pinky finger sprays mad wide. It looks unnatural. So, yeah, I don't know if you saw the thing with Hugo Gonzalez where. I think it was Ugo, where they said he had the biggest hands in the draft and it's like the biggest wings wingspan. I will show you. I am right handed. What you might see over here on your right side is my left. Yes. So just naturally I hold my hand out and the pinky does splay out for sure. Same thing on both hands. Right. That's just a natural occurring thing. Now I'm gonna. I can spread them out kind of flat. If you don't want to see it. You can look away. But I can spread things out pretty flat. So you can. This is how I can palm a basketball. So I could. I can get. I get a pretty wide. You know, my, my especially my left hand. The thumb and pinky are almost like parallel. Can't get it right. But yeah, it makes for great, like turkey. The turkey thing, the hand tracing turkey thing. It really makes for a great one because I can get the thumb way out here and you can do like a really good turkey on Thanksgiving. So that, that's a hidden talent for you. But yeah, that's. I have a weird thing with my hand where the pinky just kind of like it. It just goes way out. It's. It's. I think it's just a. It's advantageous to me basketball wise. Well, not anymore because I don't play anymore because I'm an old man. But back when I did, it was an advantage. But thanks for noticing. I do appreciate you being here. Please go check out my, my interview with Robert Parish. It's. I think it's an interesting look at Robert's life. And it's not just Celtics basketball, Celtics history. It's a good look at the person. So that's. That's the regular podcast from today. This is a bonus podcast. Again, bonus podcast tend to be shorter. But not this one. Full podcast here. Mailbag questions on corralis.com mailbag thank you for being a listener. Thank you being for being an every day or thank you for being with me every Monday through Friday. Plus these bonus podcasts. Plus when they play on the weekends. So subscribe. Get to the show on YouTube and I would love it. If you share the podcast, tell everybody they should be listening to and watching the Lockdown Celtics podcast. Here in the Lockdown Podcast Network is your team every day.