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Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
Boston Celtics Bench IGNITES as Jordan Walsh and Anfernee Simons Fuel Crucial Win
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Boston Celtics bench electrifies in gritty victory over Orlando Magic as Jordan Walsh nails the biggest shot of his career. Can Boston’s rising reserves become a true X-factor for the season ahead? John Karalis of Boston Sports Journal spotlights the Celtics’ bench explosion, with standout performances from Jordan Walsh, Anfernee Simons, Luka Garza, and Hugo Gonzalez contributing 50 points and a decisive +56 rating. The discussion zeroes in on Boston’s renewed energy, defensive discipline, and improved rebounding, while questioning if Simons should shift to the starting lineup. Analysis covers Jaylen Brown’s leadership in crunch time, Derrick White’s steadying presence, and Joe Mazzulla’s tactical trust in young talent. Looking forward, John Karalis previews the Celtics’ next challenge against the Philadelphia 76ers and underscores the importance of patience as the roster develops. Will Boston’s bench continue to deliver, and can the team’s blend of youth and experience spark a r...
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Cancel Contact Us the Boston bench steps up in a big way In a win over Orlando, Jordan Walsh hits the biggest shot of his career and we're talking about it right now on the Locked On Celtics Podcast. Huh? Yup. Beam Town be ever ready. It's the seas. Who else could it be? What they gonna say now screaming like J.T. corralis recap the madness every game, every practice prime time Depp and D White on the sideline Renin J's how we started raising banners how we finished Locked on Celtics pod Home of the winners. Hey there. Welcome back to the Lockdown Celtics Podcast podcast right here on the Lockdown Podcast Network where it is your team every day and it is the number one sports podcast network. So you got the number one Boston Celtics podcast in the world. On the number one sports Podcast network in the world. I talk about the Boston Celtics Monday through Friday bonus podcast when they play on weekends. A Friday or Saturday night show is always free. It's available Everywhere. It's on YouTube where you can get into the comment section. Share your thoughts with the everydayers, the people who join me every Monday through Friday and just enjoy talking about the Celtics. I'm John Corralis, Beat Writer for Boston Sports Journal. I've been covering the team for about 20 years doing this podcast for 10, and I've written a couple of books about the team as well. Today's show is brought to you by Game Time. Download the Game Time app, create an account, use the code Locked on NBA for $20 off your first purchase of tickets, Celtics tickets, whatever tickets you want, you can buy them online. What a win in Orlando. Just a hard fought, a classic Celtics Magic game where just haymakers being thrown. It's body shots. It's just a 12 round brawl between the Celtics and the Magic almost every time. Later on we'll talk about the defense and the rebounding. We got to get into individual players like Anthony Simons in the second segment. Let's start with the bench. Simons is part of the bench, but I just want to say the bench, overall we, we haven't talked about the bench, not in glowing terms in any stretch because the bench is not Boston's strength. Let's say we're going to put it politely there, but for the first time this season, the bench is actually the reason why they won this game. The Celtics came out super flat. They looked horrible. Joe Missoula called two timeouts in rapid succession. They fell behind by 12 early. They looked like a group of tired tourists who had been walking around the Magic Kingdom all day. It, I, I, I had no idea. I was like, if the starters look this bad, the energy is this bad, how, how are they possibly going to recover from this? And then that's where the bench steps in. Jordan Walsh comes in and changes the defensive energy. Anthony Simons starts scoring like crazy. And then as the game goes on, you get contributions from Luca Garza, from, from Hugo Gonzalez. And it's just really great to see a game where the bench starts to put things together. That is a big sign of progress where guys are starting to get more comfortable. They're, they're making maybe fewer mistakes. The mistakes they're making are what Jordan Walsh classified as mistakes of aggression, which is fine. If you want to be aggressive and sometimes you make a mistake being aggressive, that's okay. The Celtics want that. They, they would rather you err on that side than on the other side of, of not pushing hard enough. And the other team really starts to make its, you know, make plays and make runs and all that stuff. So just in general, it was great to see the bench come in and, and make that contribution. Overall, the bench had 50 points, 20 rebounds, 11 assists, five steals and were combined plus 56. So that's not something that you normally, you're, you, I don't know how many times we're going to see that from the Celtics bench to have everybody do that at the same time. And if anything, this does kind of hammer home the need for patience, right. That the things get come together in different kind of segments and like, okay, this. Anthony Simons is starting to figure out his shot, and, you know, Jordan Walsh is starting to come together with, you know, two, three decent performances. And. And, you know, you get Ugo, who has his. His moments, and Minot, who's had his moments, was not really good in this game. But to see these little bits happening, when Jalen said like a couple weeks ago, he's like, you, you can't judge us after one week. You got to give us more than a week. And it's only November 10th. And we know that wins and losses aren't the thing. Like, we're not counting up how many wins, even though the Celtics are now five and six and, oh, hey, they're the 10th seed. Not that, like, that's the stuff that we don't really care about that much. But the wins are important because you have to be able to contribute to winning. So even though I'm not counting the wins, like, I don't care about, I'd rather see the Celtics play well. And if they lose a game that they play well, I'm okay with that. Because you're like, okay, they played well and the other team maybe made some shots, maybe they, whatever, made a ton of three pointers and you lose, you lose a tough one. But if I could point to that whole game, like, wow, they played great and they won. I'd rather have that at this point of the season than, oh, they're, you know, they screwed around, they looked like crap, and they still managed to win because the other team was worse. I don't want a game like that. So it's not about the wins and losses, but to have guys like Walsh and Garza and Gonzalez, Simons all contributing to the win, that's all part of the process. The Celtics are looking for guys to accentuate Jalen and Jason when. When this. They are fully whole. Whatever the fully realized Celtics team is at this point next season, they're hoping that at least a couple of these guys are going to be there to start that season with Jalen and Jason. If the Celtics have a, you know, a few of these guys, you know, Minot, Garza, I mean, not Garza, Gonzalez, and I don't know who else like Keda. If, If a few of these guys are able to be part of next year's team, the theoretical, theoretical contending team, then this is a huge win. And these types of games where the bench collectively comes in and performs well together, that's an important part of showing Joe Missoula and Brad Stevens and. And the ownership group that, okay, this guy is part of a winning team. And so Jordan Walsh is trying to be that guy. And we, you know, I said after the last game, like Jordan Walsh and like Josh Minot, like, I think, I think Westerholm said it like the what, what the Celtics want Walsh to be, that that's what Minot is. And so in a game where Minot didn't really play well, Jordan Walsh played well. You're like, okay, well, that archetype had a good game and whoever it is, it is, it doesn't matter. But to get those guys, like, if Jordan Walsh is going to hang around long term, he, he needs to start stacking these up. And this was an incredible game for him. He came in with the defensive energy. He was just ripping guys, using his length, quick reflexes, positioning, anticipation, you know, the understanding the scouting report, understanding the tendencies and just ripping guys, just getting in there and poking the ball away and disrupting guys. And the, the defensive effort is what builds the trust that keep him on the floor. And then beginning of the fourth quarter, he hits a three pointer. The, the, you know, so the Celtics fell behind early and they took a lead in the second quarter. It was tied at halftime. Third quarter was just back and forth, back and forth, like a ton of lead changes. Two point Orlando lead going into the fourth quarter. And then, boom, there's Jordan Walsh. First basket of the fourth quarter. Jordan Walsh left corner on a Peyton Pritchard drive and kick. Corner, three pointer. Last basket of the fourth quarter. It's. It's Jordan Walsh in the, in the right corner. That's Payton Pritchard driving kick out to the right corner. So they, they trusted him out there to make the defensive plays and then he makes the offensive plays. Hitting those shots is huge because that's such a progression. If he can start hitting those shots consistently now, now you're getting some progression out of Jordan Walsh. This is the guy that I've wanted to see for a long time and I wasn't sure if I was ever going to see him, not, not in the Celtics uniform. This is a big step. I had, I had basically written him off and I had, I think, good reason to write him off. He was not good in summer league. He was not really great in the preseason. He got a bunch of DNPs and, and you're like, this is, this is not really. Doesn't seem to be working out for him. He's. He needs a fresh start or something somewhere else. But because the Celtics are constructed the way they are Joe Missoula has to go and be like, okay, this feels like a moment where we could use what Jordan Walsh can bring. Can he do it? I don't know. Well, let's throw him out there. In a different situation, Jordan might not get any minutes, but here he is with still more opportunities to prove himself, and he took full advantage of it in this game. It was great. He was great in this game. Yeah, he was great in this game. So it's. He's so young. He's still young, and it's tough. The NBA is unfair. Even guys who are in their early 20s, you're like, sorry, you're not ready yet. Celtics need somebody who's ready now, and you're not ready now. Well, he might. Might actually start getting ready. I liked what he was saying after the game about, you know, you don't want to miss an opportunity because if you blow an opportunity, the next one might not come for eight, nine, ten games. So you got to be ready for the opportunity that you have now. It's maturity. He's maturing, and it's. It's just great to hear. It's great to hear Joe talk about trusting him. It's great to see the reaction from the guys after he hit that shot. Huge, huge, huge shot. Biggest shot of his. His career as a Celtic. Am I missing one? No, I think. Yeah, I think I feel pretty good about that. So that was great. Luca Garza, Hugo Gonzalez, Anthony Simons, all of those guys stepped up. I'll talk about them when I come back. Today's show is brought to you by Robin Hood. Your ambition just met its match with Robinhood. You play for the win, not just on game day, every day, locking in on every opening, beating your pr and then beating it again. Channel that drive into your money. 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So I don't qualify for this offer that I'm about to give you, but I've hopped on that app just randomly and just say, oh, there's a game that I want to go to. I'm traveling. There's something I want to go to. Open up the app. I can click. I can see the seats that I'm going to get right from the app. There's no surprise fees. It just tap, tap, tap a couple of minutes and I'm done. I've got the tickets ready to go. If you want to get a zone deal, that's a game changer. You pick the section, they pick the seats, you save big. There's some NBA tickets out there for 25 bucks. So go take the guesswork out of buying NBA tickets with game time. Download the game time app, create an account, use the code Locked on NBA for $20 off. Your first purchase terms apply. That's locked on NBA. L, O, C, K, E, D. Locked on NBA for $20 off. Swipe, tap, ticket, go. Thank you for making lockdown Celtics your first listen every day. And thank you for making the locked on podcast network the number one sports network. That's sports podcast network. That is huge. So we're number one. I got to get a big foam finger to celebrate. We're number one. Thank you for doing that. Check out locked on NBA Locked on NBA game night. If you haven't done that by now. Game night covers all the games seven days a week. Lockdown NBA on the same feed covers all the big stories in the association. Big story for the Celtics. Here is the bench. Jordan Walsh was awesome. Happy for him. I'm happy for him. Even though, you know, look, my job is to have opinions and my job is to assess things and on a daily basis we gotta kind of live in the moment a little bit. I'm never rooting against these guys and so even though I've been tough on Jordan Walsh, I'm happy to see him pull, you know, pull a game like this. This is, this is a big deal for him. This was huge. It's huge that he was trusted in that moment by Joe to. To play. He played the whole fourth quarter trusted by Peyton Pritchard. I think that drive and kick you Know, in the corner, like these guys talk about it all the time. You, you don't look in the corner and be like, oh, I'm not going to make that pass. You gotta, you gotta make the next right play. And that was the right play and Jordan cashed in on it. That was great. Great to see Jaylen Brown turn and yell just this big primal scream at the Orlando bench. But sandwiched in there in the, in that second half and especially that fourth quarter shout out to Luca Garza who had eight rebounds, four of them were offensive. He cashed in on put backs, he cashed in on the shots down low. He was 4 of 4 in the fourth quarter and overall he had 16 points, eight rebounds, three assists, a steal, just a great 7 of 8 and the one shot he missed was a three pointer. He was, was huge on a night where Nimius K was, you know, kind of up and down and fouled out of the game. They needed Garza, they needed him to finish and you know, he, he was, was really good. I don't know if he's a long term answer here, but that was, that was a, it was a big game against a big physical team and he played well. He, he made the plays and it's just another guy that you, you know, patience is the thing, patience with this team to figure things out and is important and he, he could just be another guy that you need to be patient about. So he, he was big. Ugo Gonzalez only played 12 and a half minutes but he made some really good plays defensively. He, he's out there just playing with the maturity. I joke that he wears the number 28 because that's the age level that he plays at. He's obviously, you can tell his pro experience in, in Spain you can tell he has a level of poise. It's easy to forget sometimes that okay, you look at him, he's a 19 year old rookie and you just think of okay, 19 year old rookies act like this, this is how they play. And, and Ugo just doesn't seem scared of the moment. He doesn't seem to be bothered by any of this stuff. It is important to remember kind of like the atmospheres that you plan in Europe. Like it, we talk about these great atmospheres like, like the TD Garden and you know, I just talked about Philadelphia. That's a great atmosphere to, you know, for a Celtics game. But if you've ever watched the craziness in Europe with these guys, it's, I mean fires in, in the bill, like fire Pyrotechnics and chance. People never sit down and there's buildings rocking and full of smoke. It's when you've done that and you're 19 years old and you've played in those things, like this is like, yeah, this is the Kia center in Orlando. Like, who cares? So shout out Ugo for just being mature. A mature 19 year old. That slow foot deceleration step where he found a Mishkada was such a great play. When I talk about playing with maturity, that's it. It's changing speeds, it's that slowdown. It's the read that he made. Just beautiful stuff. Obviously he still has to get used to NBA speed, NBA physicality and all that stuff. But man, there are certain little things where you look at them, you're like, damn, he is. He's already, he's already doing this. He's already picked this up. That's advanced stuff. I don't know how good he's ever going to be. I don't know what his ceiling is, but he's already doing like the, the advanced reads and stuff. It's very, very impressive. Anthony Simons was he, he did a, all his scoring was in the first half, mostly in the second quarter. This is where things change. He flipped a 12 point deficit into an 11 point lead and that was, that was such a game changer for the Celtics. Simons, when he gets going, that was Incredible. He scored 14 points in a row. 14 points in a row. He just came down and was just banging threes. His shot is so effortless, man, it's. You get a little glimpse of the Anthony Simons fully, you know, comfortable experience. I was like, man, that, that was, that was such a fun stretch to watch in that second quarter. He. Nothing. He took, he checks, cash, no rim. It was awesome. And they talked about like, hey, you know, congratulations coming out of your, your shell after the game. Like when you're that elite a scorer. Here he is, he's in a shell in Boston. The Celtics need him to be like this. And it does make me wonder like, is it, is it time to flip him and Peyton Pritchard? Because I just think Simons with, with Derrick White and with Jaylen Brown and kind of a green light could make that starting offense so good. I, I'm going to go back to my preseason thing where I think, I think Pritchard coming in for White and just having D. White as the point guard, Pritchard as the backup point guard that cooks against second units. I think that might make more sense. Maybe Joe's not ready to make that move now, but I think Simons as a starter, getting a feel for the game. I, I, I like that. I, I'm, I think I'm going back to that idea. We'll see. We'll see if it comes about. But he was awesome. He was awesome. I didn't talk about Jaylen Brown yet or Derrick White or the defense or the rebounding, but that's what's coming up next. Today's show is brought to you by FanDuel. The NBA is back, and there's no better place to get in on the action than FanDuel. It's the official sports betting partner of the NBA. Even if you missed the start of the game, which would have been great again, you know, in this Celtics game against Orlando because you would have missed all the crappy parts. But if you want to get in on the better parts, you could maybe get some decent odds of the Celtics coming back. Because FanDuel has live bets on everything from who will score next next to fourth quarter comebacks. 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The ads, the drops, the trades, who to look for, all. If you're not listening to Josh, you're not serious about your fantasy league. And we all know how serious fantasy basketball can be. Check it out wherever you found this podcast. So other individual before Jalen Brown was, was, you know, typically good, although not as efficient, but 27 points, five rebounds to assist, a steal, a block, getting to the rim again, just a typical game for Jalen Brown. Hit a huge three pointer down the stretch to hold off the. To hold off the magic. It was one little stat. 13 makes in the fourth quarter for Boston. Jalen's three was one of three that did not involve either Ugo, Jordan Walsh or Luca Garza. Those three guys were involved in 10 of Boston's 13 makes, either by scoring or by assisting on the play. So that, that's, that's big. But Jalen was great. Derrick White was great, especially early. Scored 11 points in the first quarter, finished with 21 points, 7 of 18 shooting. That's still a little low, the three point shooting, 3 of 9. If you make one more or take one less, the number looks good. So it's starting to come around. I'm hoping that Derek is starting to break out of this slump, but really, honestly, I think aside from the bench, the biggest story is how the Celtics were able to defend better. And after the game, Jamal Mosley's entire postgame Press Conference was 17 turnovers for 29 points. And he really was pissed off about the 17 for 29. Talked about Orlando playing in a crowd and all of that and making a lot of these mistakes. The Celtics have not. They've won the turnover battles so far this season, but they haven't always been on the right side of points off of turnovers. The few turnovers the Celtics have committed have, have led to like they were. They've been damaging. But this time around, the Celtics get 29 points off 17 turnovers. So that's a huge to be. Plus 14 because they turn it over 14 point 14 times for 15 points. Plus 14 in the turnover battle is a big defensive win. So the Celtics did a great, great job. Think. I think they basically played their same defense, but we're just more disciplined about it. So that's good. They rebounded better. This is a huge number because Orlando had 12 offensive rebounds and 17 second chance points. And the Celtics had 13 offensive rebounds and 18 second chance points. That right there. When you win that battle, the Celtics will win all. If not, you know, 99% of their games they do that. They should win them all. If you're not. And I don't understand how Orlando didn't torch the Celtics on the boards, but the, the Celtics did a good job challenging. You know, you got to challenge shots without being undisciplined. You got to stay on your feet, you got to box out. And the Celtics did a good job of that. So even though it's a weakness, the whole. This is the exact kind of game where you Say when I've been saying all season, the Celtics don't have to be a good defensive rebounding team. The Celtics have to be okay at it. Not the worst. Mediocre. Mediocre is fine as a. As a defensive rebounding team. In fact, let's take a quick look at their defensive rebounding percentage, because you want it to be. I'll settle for it in the high 60s to, you know, 70%. And this one, it was 65. 65% even. That's not great. But Orlando's was 68%. So you managed to. You managed to kind of be mediocre. Really. Honestly, it was like mediocre. But because you're offensive rebounding, which is separate, we. We love to lump rebounding in as one. You got to rebound. But defensive rebound, offensive rebounding are two very different skills and different areas. The Celtics did well offensive rebounding. They did not like Luca Garza grabbed 21% of the available offensive rebounds. That's big. That's a big number. The Celtics did well enough on their offensive rebounding and the turnovers, like you do the other things. This is the Joe Missoula philosophy. Just be middle of the road rebounding and see if you can offset it in other ways. And the Celtics did that. They actually won the second chance points, and they won the turnover by a lot. And then the. The shooting. Defensively, the Celtics, I don't think they did anything different. It's just that Paolo Banchero was 0 for 5 and Anthony Black was 0 for 4, and the Magic were 7 for 30. That's exactly where you'd think they would be. And if they had that kind of shooting night on Friday, we'd be talking about two wins in Orlando. So the shooting, the Celtics shooting was at 39 and a half percent. That, that's much better, partly because Anthony Simons was five of eight and you got two of two out of Jordan Walsh, which is a shocker. But 33, three pointers, they didn't overdo it with the three pointers. People are happy about that. So good win. Just a good win. The defense was there. The offense came through when it needed to. The rebounding was where it, you know, needed to be. The bench came through and contributed. It carried like Jalen had his stretches, Derek had his stretches. Payne Pritchard did not have a good night overall, but did have five rebounds and four assists. So, yeah, it's. It's a, It's a. It's a nice win. And from a wins and losses perspective, they're 5 and 6 after 11, this is exactly when I talked about getting through 5 and 6 or 6 and 5 was totally fine with me. So I'm. I'm okay with where the Celtics are. We'll see what they do in Philly. If they can win in Philly and go.500 through their first 12. Now they got 70 games left where you can see if you can just do a little bit better. The pattern is going to kind of continue this way. It's. The good teams are going to be tough to beat. The bad teams should be easier to beat, and these games in the middle are going to be, you know, slugfests. So if the Celtics can beat the Sixers and. And finish this 12, this opening 12 games at.500, I'd be. I'd be very, very happy, even if they lose. And at 5 and 7, it's okay. But if they go 6 and 6, I'd be very happy because I do think the patience aspect of this is important. You got to give these guys time to figure these things out. You got to give Derek time to. To figure himself out. You got to give Simons time to come out of his shell. These guys who have been struggling, Jordan Walsh, you know, last week we were talking about Baylor, Shireman. Now it's Jordan Walsh. Who knows what it's going to be in, you know, by the end of this week. So you. You just got to give the process time to kind of shake out. We're. We're getting a little bit more consistency with the starting lineup where we're starting to see maybe some semblances of a rotation. And from there, it's a matter of, can guys make one or two less mistakes? Fewer mistakes per game? Can you make one less mistake per game? And if you can do that, then that could turn around and be a good thing that happens on the other end. You can make a shot. You can, you know, get a steal where it's a foul. Celtics still foul too much. You got to live with some of that. But they still foul too much. But again, in the fourth quarter, I think they did a much better job of that as well. They. Well, Orlando went to the line 12 times. Six were for Wagner, six for Ben Caro. So, I mean, those are the two main guys. So it's still, you know, it's okay. It's okay. But can you be a little bit better this next game? Just incremental progress. That's it. So we'll see. Nice. Nice to see the bench step up. I'll be back tomorrow. Tom Westerholm will join me tomorrow, then post game Tuesday post Sixers Wednesday post who do they play on Memphis? And then the Celtics have a few days off, so there'll be a practice. I'll be here for you Monday through Friday this week, so make sure you're subscribed wherever you get your podcast. The show's free, it's available everywhere. Thank you for becoming an everydayer listening to me or watching the show every Monday through Friday. I do appreciate you so much for doing that. Thank you. You everydayers are what make the Lockdown Podcast Network the number one sports podcast network around. That is huge. I do appreciate you all for doing that. Now hop in the comments section on the YouTube page, share your thoughts and then share the podcast. Tell everybody they should be listening to and watching the Lockdown Celtics podcast here on the Lockdown Podcast Network. It's your team every day.