← Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
Boston Celtics DEMOLISH Bucks as Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown Put on a Clinic
00:33:01
Boston Celtics dominate the Milwaukee Bucks as Jayson Tatum continues his stunningly seamless return, nearly notching another triple-double. Can anyone stop this Boston squad as the playoffs approach? The Celtics’ fluid offense and relentless ball movement led to 43 first-quarter points, while Jaylen Brown’s creative finishes and Derrick White’s efficiency showcased the depth of Joe Mazzulla’s rotation. Main talking points include Neemias Queta's remarkable progression into a trusted big man, Payton Pritchard’s key bench scoring, and the defensive adjustments that neutralized Milwaukee despite their hot three-point shooting. With the Celtics’ magic number for the second seed dropping to three, the path to playoff dominance looks wide open. Locked On Celtics takes you inside the key plays, standout performers, and the looming postseason picture for Boston’s hottest team.
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- [00:02]
John Corrales
It's the Locked on podcast Network your team every day.
- [00:10]
Wes Goldberg
This is Wes Goldberg from Locked On NBA and Locked On Heat with a message From Dell. Dell PCs with Intel Insight are built for the moments that you plan for and the ones you don't. The moments that you're working from a cafe and realize every outlet's taken or the times that you're deep in your flow and can't be interrupted for an auto update. That's why Dell builds tech that adapts to you when with long lasting battery and built in intelligence that makes updates around your schedule not in the middle of it. Find technology built for the way you work@dell.com XPS built for you.
- [00:40]
John Corrales
This message is brought to you by Apple Card Apple Card members can earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases wherever they shop. This means you could be earning daily cash on just about anything, like a slice of pizza from your local pizza place or a latte from the corner coffee shop. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app to see your credit limit or offer in minutes subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at applecard.com now on the Locked On Celtics podcast, Boston walks into Miami, slaps the bucks around for 48 minutes and then leaves locked on Celtics PO home of the winners. Hey there. Welcome back to the show. I'm John Corrales. Today's show is brought to you by FanDuel. During the tournament which ends this weekend almost FanDuel is offering 300 back in bonus bets every day for 10 days. Head to FanDuel.com to get started. Boston Celtics get the very easy win they get got out in front of the Bucks by a ton early and they just kept adding to the lead. Nothing really never really threatened, never really bothered and it was very easy. Later on we'll get to the standings. Watch Magic number down to three. We'll get to Namish Kaeda, who was awesome. Peyton Pritchard. Let's just start at the beginning where the Celtics the ball movement was incredible. The The Celtics had 12 assists on their first 15 baskets. Tatum in the first quarter had five. Jalen in the first quarter had three. Derek had three. It was just a very professional show up, face a bad team, smack them around early, never really give him a chance. And even though the Bucks made three pointers, it was it was still a very easy win. They they gave up 26 in the first quarter, 29 in the second, 21 in the third, 25 in the fourth. So 101 is kind of right around where you want the defense to be. And they still gave up 21 three pointers, but they gave up 35 baskets overall. So 14. 2. So 21 of 47 from 3. 14 of. What is that? I'm not even going to try to do a 30. I am going to try to do that 36. And in. In two pointers. Bucks only get to the line 13 times, so the Celtics controlled all the other stuff. They turned the Bucks over 13 times and got 19 points out of that. So even though they were giving up three pointers and even though the Bucs hit 21 of them, the Celtics defense ultimately did what it needed to do and doesn't always look pretty right. You sit there and say, well, the Celtics defense, how can you say it was good when they were making shots? Sometimes you make shots against decent defense. Sometimes you're okay with the shots that they were getting. And you look at Taurean Prince, who just didn't miss in this game. He almost literally didn't miss. It was seven of eight, four or five from three. Yeah. AJ Green, five of nine, Pete Nance, four of nine. You know, it's like a bunch of. Okay, all right, That's. That's nice. Nice for them. A few guys got. Got hot and kept things briefly from getting too far out of control. But the. The overarching story of this game, at least early on especially, was how the ball was moving, the offense was clicking. The Celtics put up 43 points in the first quarter. 43, 32, 30, and 28. And the 28 in the fourth quarter was all. All garbage time. Quote, unquote, garbage time. So you got an incredible offensive performance out of these guys. Jason Tatum, Jaylen Brown, what more can you say? What more can you say about Jalen and Jason? And like Jason, especially because of coming back from the injury. That's. That's the thing that I will sit here and stammer and be unclear on what I want to say about Jason, because you look at that, and it's still. It's just never going to make sense. It will never make sense to me how he looks so comfortable out there. Part of it is the Bucks defense was awful. And so even a guy at whatever percentage he is is. That's still well past what he needs to be to make the Milwaukee Bucks look bad. But the timing of everything, the passes that he's making are so easy. The. The. The needles that he's threading just. He sees the game. He reads it quickly. He is Sharper than anybody in this situation should be. And I just can't stop saying that. Ten months out of surgery, returning, and then being back for a month. There's just no rational human being that would say this would be where he was in a month. I never thought that he would be anything less than what he was before. But you always leave open the possibility of, hey, you know, it's an Achilles. Maybe it does SAP something. You know, maybe. Maybe there's a. Who knows? There's always a maybe. There's always a maybe. In any of these situations when you're coming back for a major injury, there's always the, well, maybe this. And we, at least I think my part of my job is I have to consider all the maybes. What if this very reasonable thing is possible? What if that ends up happening and it didn't? So the. What I thought was a reasonable expectation of, well, Tatum's coming back after 10 months. He's going to need to really take his time ramping up and he's going to have to come off the bench and be, you know, play these short stints and have to build his way up. And will he have enough time to build his way up to the playoffs and you start going down those roads. I thought it was reasonable to expect Tatum to come back and play 16, 17, 18 minutes in his first few games. First week, first two weeks, whatever it was, then he comes back and plays the 27 and gets up to over 30 very quickly. And it just blows all my expectations out of the water. And so now the absolute best case scenario has unfolded, which shouldn't be a surprise because this entire basketball season has been the best case scenario for the Boston Celtics. You go up and down each player, and almost all of them have experienced a best case scenario, with the possible exception of Derrick White. And he's getting there now that things are starting to get back to normal. And, you know, Pritchard started off slow, but he's obviously playing, you know, out of his mind. The, the, even, even the, the parts of the season that weren't best case scenario weren't really that bad. And so here's Tatum being incredible again. The, the defense, the steals. He had two, two straight steals in the second quarter, I think, where Milwaukee just like threw the ball into his hands. It's like they forgot that he's 6, 9, 610 and he's got these incredibly long arms. I don't know what they were doing other than being terrible. But Tatum being fully engaged, making all these plays, I don't know what else to say. It's just incredible stuff. And then. And then Jalen, first quarter, was really slinging it, too. He was. He was making the right reads. They were getting off the ball quickly. It was incredible stuff. And then Jalen starts going into his scoring mode. And there was a moment, I. I will say, I know there's a segment of Celtics fandom out there that is strictly Jason Tatum fans and love Tatum, hate Jalen. And there's a group of people who are the opposite. Love Jalen, hate Jason, which I think is silly. They're both great players, whatever. But when Jason needed one more assist and Jalen was shooting in the third quarter, and I was like, ooh, Jalen, you gotta just give it. Give it to Jason so he can give it back to you so they can give him an assist for you. Just do that and let him get the assist and everybody be happy. I'm sure that there's going to be some. Some level of backlash in some corner of the Internet for Jalen taking a bunch of shots in isolation when Jason needed. Needed an assist to get the triple double, as it was 23 points, 11 rebounds, nine assists for Jason, 26 points, three rebounds, four assists for Jalen. Jalen had two steals, Tatum had three. Two turnovers a piece. Just very nice, solid games. Jalen, I won't even say the efficiency. Seven of 17, okay. You hit a cup, you hit one more, and you're right almost at 50, so that's fine. Got to the line 11 times. Jalen Brown. I. I said it. I found my tweet back in November where I said Jalen's been taking some dance classes or something. That's still the case. That one drive where. And Scal highlighted it. He's driving left, and defender kind of slides over to his left, and he just kind of brings it low and around and kind of crosses over to his right. Doesn't do a crossover. He just brings it over to his right as he's gathering and finishes on that side. It's just. That's. That's a new level of Jalen Brown. And, you know, when you think back, I always think back to his first couple years when Jalen was just straight line, just 100 miles an hour, and now he's so much more in control. There's a video of him and Scal at the practice facility where Jalen's saying, there are times where I look like I'm just kind of meandering out there, but when you're going slow, you see Everything. When you, you see this, you see the dog, you see the mailman, you see him putting the letters in the mailbox. But when you're driving 100 miles an hour, you, you miss a lot of things. You miss a lot of Those reads. The 100 miles an hour drives. That, that was, that was Jalen in his first couple years. The slower guy now is the guy that's getting to the rim and having all these creative finishes and figuring out when you need to pull up for a jumper spin and get into that baseline jumper that he took, which was nuts drive. Creative finishes, finishing right, finishing left, all, all just great stuff. But just as big a story in this was Nimius. K Nemi was everywhere. I'll get into Neemi's game when we come back. Today's show is brought to you by FanDuel. It's tournament time. We're going to start wrapping up the tournament here. It's obviously one of the best times of the year. Non stop action as we get ready to cut down the nets on Monday. Right now, FanDuel is giving you a new customer, a way to stay in the action all tournament long. 300 back in bonus bets every day for 10 days. So you had 10, 10 chances to stay involved throughout the entire tournament. You can still get in on it and mix it up however you want. There are still games to be picked. There are still futures that can be picked. There are still same game parlays out there that you can pick. So it's perfect for the tournament. Every day there's something new. Different matchups, new storylines and new ways to get involved. 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- [14:57]
John Corrales
Celtics your first listen every day. This is a bonus podcast. They plan a Friday night or a Saturday night. I've got a podcast for you. I also have bonus podcasts throughout the week sometimes. So you got to be subscribed to get this show. It's available on YouTube. Come join me at least five days a week, often six, sometimes seven. And you probably get eight, nine, ten podcasts sometimes. So plenty there. I'm, I'm John Corrales. I'm covering the Celtics for Celtics on SI. Been covering the team for about 20 years now. I've been doing this podcast for 10 and I in, in all of my time doing this podcast, I, I don't know if I've seen a guy make as many strides as Nish K has. And he's, he's been incredible. He had 19 points in this game, 10 rebounds, four block shots, a couple of assists. Just his chemistry with Tatum has been off the charts. And you see them, you see Keda, and this is a huge development for him just over the course of this season recognizing. Okay, hey, they're switching. So you're not sitting there just going up to set a pick when they switch, right? You're going up, you're setting. You look like you're setting a pick and you're gone, right? You slip the screen. So you don't give the defense time to understand, okay, here's the switch. We are doing this. I'm pointing to you, you point to me. We are switching. You don't give them the time to make that just very obvious call. When you come out, come over to set a screen, you get out of it right away. You slip. That's called a slip. When you go up like you're gonna Set a screen. But then you take off, you slip the screen. Now you've thrown off the defense's ability to time when they're switching, which often means you. You at least in the first few steps, find an opening. Now, because the Celtics have the guys that they have. Sam Houser, who was three of three in the first quarter and just on fire, Jalen Brown, obviously you're those guys spacing the floor and you're worried about those guys. And the way Tatum is picking defenses apart, everybody's a little bit more aware of, hey, I've got this guy. I can't. I can't worry about my help, because if I help too much, if I over commit too soon, then Tatum's going to find this guy and it doesn't matter where he is on the floor. But then Tatum slips. I mean, K slips the screen and gets into the middle of the paint. And now the. The help is late and he's just him and the rim. And it's a dunk or it's a short roll. He reads the defense and he finds a passing lane. He finds someone to get the ball to. Is it a cutter? Fine, he'll find a cutter. Is it a shooter? He'll find a shooter. Keita's development just from the beginning of the season to the end of the season is incredible in that area because he's seeing the floor, he's seeing the. He's not just catching and being in the middle and just tunnel vision. I have to go to the rim. It's an understanding where. Where are the defenders? Where is the help coming from? Oh, someone's coming from that way. I've got an open guy over here. You don't have to just put up your floater, which. It's a surprisingly nice touch on the floater. Keita is seeing the floor, feeling the defense, understanding. Think of it in terms of a quarterback with a pocket presence. When he gets the ball in the middle of the lane, he has a sort of pocket presence that he's developed. And I think it's developed mostly this season where you understand, okay, here's where this guy's coming from. Here's where the openings are. This is where I'm going to get the ball. And I remember specifically there was one play earlier this season, I can't even remember the game. Me might have been, I want to say maybe Chicago, where they were sending two at Jalen, and I got on Nene hard for not recognizing the short role and not recognizing that he had to be there to be an outlet and to make sure that he's available to make the pass and, and all of that stuff. And then, I mean, I took a lot of heat for it because people were, you know, because J O Jalen turned the ball over. I remember Jalen turned the ball over. But now Mimi is there in the short roll. It's like they got to the film session, they saw it, he said, okay, I got it. And that hasn't happened again. In fact, he's there in the short roll making these great plays over and over and over again. I know that other guys are having bigger seasons that will get recognition for or get more kind of love for most improved player. Think of like Nikhil Alexander Walker or I think Jalen Duran's name is being thrown out there and there's, you know, bigger names, bigger, bigger performances. You know, Nikhil Alexander Walker's averaging 20 something for, for the Hawks and Duran is an all star. So those guys are going to get a fair amount of the votes, I think. But even then they were always good players and you know, a little bit more opportunity. Nikhil Alexander Walker, a little more opportunity. Okay. Yeah, he's a 20 point scorer and that, that deserves plenty of recognition for improvement. But Keda has gone from third string center unplayable at times comes into this season. I know that he came in off the Euro basket run and there are a lot of people who believed in him, but generally I know I didn't think that he had this level of play in him and he improved greatly from last season to the beginning of this season and then this season from day one until now, that's been even more incredible improvement. He might be the most improved player literally from day one of this season till now, every time something has come up and I'm very kind of keen on what he's doing. And listen, it's something that I am attuned to because I played in the post. I was a, I was a big throughout high school and college. Like that's, that's where I feel most comfortable. I understand a lot of those things that a big is supposed to be doing and when I, when I see things like that, I've been hammered. The coaching has been hammered into me at a former NBA player as a coach that hammered a lot of these ideas into me. And so I've, I've been tough on Keita all, all throughout this season. Whenever I see a deficiency, I call it out. And every time I've called one out the next, like literally the next time that situation has presented itself. He was better at it. And so one of my core beliefs in basketball is it's okay to make mistakes. Just don't make the same mistake multiple times. And show me, basically show me that you're learning. Okay, you did something wrong. No problem. Everybody makes mistakes. Just don't make the same mistake all the time. And Keda, to his credit, it doesn't make the same mistake twice. He doesn't do it very often. Every once in a while. Every once in a while, he'll slip into an old habit every once in a while. And that's okay. That happens. But I have to give him absolute full credit for the season that he's having. I cannot imagine another player who has improved all of the things that this guy has improved to this degree. This was an incredible game from him. It's been an incredible run from him. And he's gone from a guy that I didn't think could play who I thought, if you're starting him at center, you're going to have a tough season to. Now I completely trust him. I trust him and that's. That's the best compliment I can give him. I trust him. He's. He's been an incredible player and, and that. It's been great. It's been great. All right, we'll wrap it up. When we come back. The rest of the guys, Pton Pritchard and the standings watch and all of that stuff. It's coming up next. Today's show is brought to you by. Game time. You want to get into a. An NBA arena because watching these guys play basketball up close, it's amazing. You don't even know how much different it is in person than it is on tv. 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Early on he, I thought he when, when it came time to there's always like a make or break in the first quarter of a big run where you're, you kind of decide all right, we're going to blow this team out or this is going to be tough. And it's, it's when Peyton comes in. Is Peyton hitting shots or is he not or is that unit, is that second unit after Jason Tatum subs out, is that group going to come in and continue the scoring? And Pritchard did and Pritchard was huge in this 16 points but 7 of 12 shooting. Once again living among the trees. Just doing Peyton Pritchard things. I, I think like it's almost like every big man has a little button on his, on his jersey and Peyton just gets in there with his head and his shoulder and hits that button and it just gives the big like a three second kind of like oh freeze. And Pritchard just spins, fades and hits the shot. It just, it's like a little zap that takes away their energy because that's how it looks sometimes. So Pritchard gets into the middle of the paint, hits those paint non restricted shots as usual, gets to the rim, puts up 16 points, but was only two of six from three. So he's not doing it from three pointer, three point land all the time. That that's the most impressive part of his season. And he also had six assists. The Celtics had 33 assists on 50 buckets in this one. They moved the ball really, really well. So those were all the big players like Baylor. Charman didn't do a ton. Hauser like I said was great. Derrick White. Derrick White. Here we are 28 minutes in. Derrick White just, he's been kind of low key but he, and he scored nine of his 17 in the fourth quarter. But 17 points, five assists, three rebounds. Just in there getting the catch and shoot shots. The more catch and shoots he gets, the better he's going to shoot. Just as simple a thing as that. So Derek was, was good as well. So this was not very deep. They didn't go deep. Deep into their bench. They went to Luca Jordan Walsh got some, some run late and did okay. Like you get some fun stuff from Basse. Ugo gets in for the last six minutes. I think he's out of the playoff rotation. Ron Harper pretty soon I think will get upgraded. He gets in, plays a few minutes but that's it. The Celtics get the easy win. They, they didn't get anything from Tatum or Brown. They all sat in the fourth quarter. And so now the Celtics go into their final full week. This is crazy. Sunday, Sunday afternoon, 3:30 game final full week of the season. And they go into it with a three game lead in the loss column and a magic number of three. So now any combination of Celtics wins and Nick, Nick's losses that combines to for three second seed is clinched. So they do play each other again on April 9th. This will probably be decided by then. And I was looking at April 9th as this could be a pivotal game for the Celtics. But you got Toronto on Sunday, Charlotte on Tuesday. That, that might be enough. Now if it's not settled, then the ninth will, will probably do it. And then you close the season with New Orleans and Orlando. It's. I think the Celtics have this. I've been saying this for a few games now. Celtics have this wrapped up. This is, this is basically over. But the Knicks, Knicks beat Chicago by 40. So big wins for both of these teams. Yeah. So that's where the Celtics are. This. Let me see. Let's. Let's just run down the. The Knicks next opponents before we wrap this up. They play at Atlanta. At Atlanta. Home versus Boston, home versus Toronto, home versus Charlotte. So it's not the easiest stretch for them. Atlanta, Boston, Toronto, Charlotte, all above 500 teams. So it's in. Look, Toronto's looking to. Toronto's playing for something. Charlotte's playing for something. They want to. They. Charlotte's now the eighth seed. Toronto is the seventh seat. Philly is the sixth seed. Atlanta wants to hold on. So these are all teams that are trying to, trying to win. So I just don't see the Knicks kind of sweeping this and putting any pressure on the Celtics. I think it's. This is pretty much Celtics second seed. But next game is Sunday, Toronto. If the Celtics can take care of business there, that goes a long way into locking things up. One more week left and then one extra game. So Toronto, Charlotte at New York, home, back to back, New Orleans. And then Sunday the 12th at 6 o', clock, Orlando and the season is over. And then, then the playoffs, I'm going to guess they start on the 19th, right? Or maybe the 18th or 19th. It'll be two days off. Anyway, marathon Monday is the 20th, so they just, I don't think they want that too. Too much of overlap with the, the marathon there. So. But wherever, wherever it starts, whenever it starts, playoffs are almost here. We're here, baby. Season's almost over. What a season. What a season. What a game, what a win. Jason Tatum's a robot. All right, that's gonna do it for this bonus podcast. Thank you for being here. Thank you for. It's a Friday night, so hey, maybe you're in the car on the way back from the club. Maybe you're as a wishful thinking that the audience is young enough to go out party and then get in the car and say, whoa, there's a new Lockdown Celtics. Let's put that on for the ride home. But maybe you never know. More likely you're listening to this in the morning because you've gone to bed and enjoyed it. But whoever's here with me now or later, whatever it is, I appreciate you being here, being an every day or now. I would love it if you please share the podcast. Tell everybody they should be listening to and watching Lockdown Celtics podcast here in the Lockdown Podcast Network. It's your team every day. And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show. Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date? Oh, no. 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John Corrales
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