
Boston Celtics dominate Philadelphia 76ers as Payton Pritchard delivers an historic 32-point explosion off the bench. Can Pritchard’s confidence and the Celtics’ depth seal the series at home and fuel a Finals run? John Karalis of Celtics On SI breaks down Boston’s commanding 128-96 win, spotlighting Pritchard’s heroics, Jordan Walsh’s defensive presence, and Nikola Vucevic’s steadying minutes. Insights include how Joel Embiid’s high usage backfired for Philadelphia, the Celtics’ relentless rebounding and defense led by Derrick White, and why Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown’s second-half surge closed the door. With Joe Mazzulla’s squad firing on all cylinders, the discussion turns to strategic adjustments, potential playoff challenges from the Knicks or Hawks, and what lies ahead if the Celtics can capitalize on their home-court advantage.
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John Corrales
Foreign.
Wes Goldberg
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John Corrales
Availability and eligibility vary by state. Now on the Lockdown Celtics podcast, Payton Pritchard has an historic night. And Joyn Bede returns and does more harm than then good. Welcome back to the show. I'm John Corrales. Later on, we'll get to the Jason Tatum, Jalen Brown stuff. We'll get into Joel Embiid and all of that. In the second segment, we've got to talk about Derrick White's defense. We're going to talk about the rebounding, but let's just start with this. Boston Celtics get the 128.96 win here in Philadelphia. If you're watching the show on YouTube, I'm out here on the concourse at the Xfinity Mobile arena because they are tearing this. They tore up the basketball court. They're probably, they're putting the ice back up for the hockey and they will not put the basketball court back together again this season if the Celtics can go back home and finish this out in Game 5. So Celtics come in here, blow the doors off of Philadelphia. This was a close game to start. A little back and forth. I think it was 11:10 Philly at one point and the Celtics went on this monster run. Thank you, Peyton Pritchard. Now, I wasn't sure how it was going to go. Joel Embiid came back. I'll get to Joel in a minute. But he, he came back and immediately the, the quote unquote buzz in the media room was like, well, this series is over. Not that we thought that Joel was going to have any sort of monster impact other than what he did, which was not great. So anyway, Peyton Pritchard comes in, and when the Celtics are struggling, he comes in and starts hitting shots and was huge. Now he finishes with 32, which is a playoff career high. It's the second most off the bench in Celtics history. In the first quarter, he came in and scored 13 of Boston's 34 points and 13. When Tatum had 5, Neemi had 5. For a stretch there, it was 9, 8 Boston, and it was Nene with 5, Vuch with 4, and Embiid with all 8 Sixers points was like a battle of the centers. And Pritchard comes in and changes all of that with his monster first quarter. 5 of 7, shooting, 3 of 5 from 3. And he said after the game that he, he kind of, he hated his game too. He thought that he was making poor decisions, all of that. And, and he, he kind of was really down on himself. And he felt the start of a Turnaround in Game 3, and that continued into Game 4. And I think part of that, that feeling of, hey, I, I, I'm the focal point, I can be a focal point. I should be the focal point when I've got it going like this. You know, we've got a team full of great players and great scorers. I can be that. That, that attitude over the past year that he's developed kind of helps him in these situations. He's out there just, first of all, nailing everything from three, doing the Peyton Pritchard stuff, getting into the lane, scoring in the paint. He had one shot. I forget who it was over. Might have been Andre Drummond, where he gets into Drummond, does his patented kind of like, spin turn, fade, all of that stuff. And he smirked on his way back. He just was just like, this is what I do, man. He had that smirk on his face. And then he was talking trash with Reggie Miller. And I forgot that he and Reggie had, like, a good relationship. I was like, oh, man, he what? What did Reggie say? What did Reggie do? And I had to be reminded on press Rose, like, no, no, no, they like each other. Peyton's just doing that. And I asked Peyton afterwards, I was like, so, so what was all that? Because it looks like you, you're angry. And he's said, your face, your face. You just look angry. He had a funny line of, yeah, I guess I don't know how to change my face when I'm talking like that because he, like, he and Reggie Miller are very close and just that Peyton finds a way to fuel himself. In fact, I have an exclusive. How much of this is really exclusive, but I went one on one with Peyton Pritchard and had about a three or four minute interview that I will drop as part of a bonus at some point here in the next day or two or I'll include it in one of the podcasts where he talks about his, you know, playing with a chip on his shoulder and developing that over time. But Pritchard comes in and does a job. But not just Pritchard, the entire bench. Because you also had Jordan Walsh play some meaningful minutes there in the first quarter and his defense was incredible. Baylor Shireman comes in and immediately makes an impact. Had two offensive rebounds in three minutes in the first quarter where the Celtics started to go on a run. It was a 25, 25 to 6 or 25 to 5, 21 of those. I forget exactly what the run was. But part of that is the, the rebounding part of it was Pritchard obviously going nuts from, you know, scoring. And it was Jordan Walsh coming in and playing incredible defense, shutting down like cutting off Tyrese Maxey and, and forcing a 24 second violation. And Baylor Scheireman coming in and, and, and making an impact both sides of the floor. The bench, the Celtics bench, you got, you know, got into foul trouble again, which at this point you might as well just not even start him. Just start Vuch and bring. Bring Keita off the bench. If he's gonna just get into foul trouble in the first two minutes, then do something else. Listen, this is a side note. Kate is not having a great series. And after the regular season that he had, he has earned the rights to kind of figure it out and, and get the additional opportunities to try to figure it out. But he needs to figure it out. That's just, it's not going to hurt the Celtics in this series. And luckily the Knicks and the Hawks are going to be going. You hope they're going to be going seven, but it's definitely going six no matter what. So you have some time if you can go home and handle your business in game five and win this and have it be Celtics in five like I said it was going to be. Neemi has to figure this out because they need him. They need him. You know, part of why the Celtics were so successful this season is because Kada was a legitimate starting center. He cannot, and I don't want to say revert because I don't think there's a reverting to anything. I don't think there's a regression. I think this is his first meaningful minutes as a playoff center and it's something that he has to adjust to. He has to understand what the calls are and maybe he thinks that, you know, it's the playoffs, you're going to get away with more. And there's legitimate kind of discussion to be had about how these games are being officiated because it feels like night and day from last year's playoffs. You know, how they were officiated. That first round last year was a slugfest and now it's kind of like normal officiating. So there, there might be some of, some of that going on, but he just can't get into foul trouble. Nikola Vuchovic did a, you know, a really good job and has really held things down for the Celtics. And, you know, you got a little bit of Luca Garza in there and, and the entire bench in the, you know, the first half was, was really, really good and part of the Celtics kind of coming out on top. Like, look at the, the plus minus on the bench. Vuchovic 14 plus 14 in the first half. Peyton plus 17. Jordan Walsh plus 14. Baylor Scheireman plus 11. Those guys were all huge, huge reasons why the Celtics were able to build this big lead and hold this big lead. Let's come back. I want to talk about Joel Embiid and the impact that he had on the Sixers because I think he helped the Celtics more than anything. So that is coming up next. Today's show is brought to you by five Hour Energy. If you've got a sweet tooth, you know how tough it is to find that perfect treat without all the sugar. 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John Corrales
Thank you for making Lockdown Celtics your first listen every day. This show is available Monday through Friday. It's on YouTube if you want to watch the show. It's available on every major podcasting app and I've got bonus podcasts throughout the week, plus when they play on the weekends. Obviously I'll be podcasting after that. So thank you for joining me and making this part of your daily routine. I'm John Corrales. I cover the Celtics for Sports Illustrated's Celtics on SI. I've been covering this team for 20 years. I've been doing this podcast for 10. 10 years on this podcast. This is a long time. I've seen a lot of basketball and I've seen Joel Embiid make a difference. He made the difference though, for the Boston Celtics, in my humble opinion. It's funny, I heard people talking about his usage rates in this game and for embiid it was 37.8%. So basically 38% of all the plays that ended in a shot or turnover that was Joel Embiid. So let me just start with this. Thank you, Joel Embiid, for using up 40% of your team's possessions after sitting out two and a half weeks with an appendectomy and already not being in the best of shape but taking such a huge workload and taking away from Tyrese Maxey VJ Edgecomb. Because ultimately that's what he did. The best defense that the Celtics had on on Maxi and Edgecomb. Okay, I don't want to disrespect Jordan Walsh when I say this because he played the best defense on on Tyrese Maxey. But to make my point about Joel Embiid, it felt like sometimes the best defense was to Let Joel Embiid try to cook because Embiid took 20, 21 shots in this game. Tyrese Maxey, who has been carrying this team, 14 shots. Paul George, 13. VJ Edgecomb, nine. Another offer for. From three for Edgecomb. So why did the Celtics win this thing by 32? So you start, like I said, in the first segment, with Peyton Pritchard and the bench coming in when the starters weren't quite at their absolute best, then you work in, and I'll get to this in a second. The defense, the rebounding, rebounding was huge. The Celtics were able to just stifle the. The Sixers on the boards. But also, you didn't get anything. The Sixers didn't get anything from their role players. No one contributed anything meaningful here. Paul George had 16. Tyrese Maxey did end up getting 22, but on 14 shots, like, yeah, nice, efficient night, but 14 shots for Maxi. You. You need him, especially when he's hitting. You need him to take a lot more than that. You needed a lot more from him. Joel's numbers look good, right? 26 points, 10 rebounds, 6 assists, a block, a steal. You. If you didn't watch this game, you're like, oh, my God, I can't believe this guy had an appendectomy and then came back and did all this. That was amazing. It wasn't amazing. I looked at. I don't. I didn't see him as playing well at all in this game. He made some jumpers. He made some shots, right? He's big. He's going to get in there. He's going to get some defensive rebounds. I thought the net effect of Embiid being on the floor was a lot of standing and watching. Like I said, with Tyrese Maxey, like, where was he? I didn't see him going off. And on top of having to stand and watch so much, you had the Celtics putting, you know, their best individual defenders on him and making his life very, very difficult. You had Edgecomb, again, a rookie. You know, this is why you don't trust rookies in these situations. It's because rookies play on so much confidence where he. When he was not able to get going, that confidence is not there. He. It's. It's not surprising to me that he has an 0 for 7 and 0 for 4 and then like a 5 for 7. It's not going to be a consistent 4 for 10, you know, 3 for 8 type of shooting for him. It's. It's going to be an all or nothing for a Guy like Edgecomb, and if he's giving you nothing, it's tough for the Sixers to overcome that. You know, you get this. This big statistical night, quote unquote, from Joel, and they only put up 96 points against the Celtics defense. So that. That is, I think, the. The big story for the Sixers. If they want to throw Embiid out there again in Game 5, I feel I'm not even going to book a hotel.
Wes Goldberg
I.
John Corrales
Not usually I'll book a hotel as a backup. I'm not even gonna book a hotel now, you know, because they. They attacked Embiid over and over and over again to the point where at the. In the third quarter, they were mixing it up. The Sixers went to some kind of zone. I saw a. A kind of like a pre. Switch on one play where Embiid. Vucevic had Embiid on him. Vuch was coming up to set the screen as he, like, passed Paul George. Paul George picked up Vuch, and so they ran a pick and roll. Now Paul George is in the action with Tatum, and he just switches on to Tatum. And they're not gonna. They're not gonna go at the Vuch. Whatever mismatch he has, they're not gonna try that. So they could have gone to Jalen, who now had Joel Embiid on him. You could have just flowed right into something there. And I'm sure that's something to watch where. If the Celtics want to go for it in game five. But this is how. How damaging Embiid was for the Sixers, where you had to start hiding him. You have to start finding ways to switch him out before the action happened so the Celtics couldn't exploit him whatever they tried to do. If he was in drop, you just pull up and shoot a jumper. If he came up and was at the level of the screen. Namish Kaeda was open early in the. In the first quarter for a few easy dunks. Like I said, he. He had five of Boston's first nine points, and Vucovic had the other four. So I. I implore the Sixers, please keep playing Joel Embiid. Like, let's start him again. Absolutely. Put them out there. Play him another 35 minutes. Run everything through him. Get that usage rate up to 40%, no problem. Because every time he has the ball, it's. It's minutes that Maxi and Edgecomb and George, and they're the guys that, you know, when they play fast, those are the guys that hurt you. Andre Drummond did nothing. And he, you know, will will not always give you anything anyway, but he's, he's at least had some moments. Justin Edwards came in, played 10 minutes, did nothing. Zero points. Zero points for Dominic Barlow in 10 minutes. You got, you got 12 points out of Quentin Grimes, four. Just four out of Bona, four out of 10. Like the, that was garbage time, though. Two points out of Kelly Oubre, 0 for 6 over 2 from 3, just two free throws. You know that that's the more they stand around, the better it is for the Boston Celtics. The Sixes are at their best when the ball is moving. And so if you, if they don't want to play fast, if they don't want to play that style, then by all means play Joel Embiid and the Celtics will close us out in Boston. Let's get to the other guys. Derrick White, his defense. I have to highlight that the rebounding, Tatum and Brown, that's all coming up next as we wrap up the show.
Wes Goldberg
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John Corrales
Thanks for making Locked on Celtics your first listen. Every day you are with me every Monday through Friday. That makes you an everydayer. So let's go ahead and make this thing official. Why don't we get you onto the Locked on every day or club. You get ad free audio access to our members only. Discord and more. It's all built for you, our most loyal fan. Go to lockdown celtics.supercast.com lockdown celtics.supercast.com 5 bucks a month or 50 bucks for the year for all of that good stuff. So I gotta highlight Derrick White's defense and even though, you know he, he looked a little timid now. Not timid, hesitant with some of the shooting. He didn't need to shoot. Listen, Derek's at his absolute best. As you know, he likes, he loves being the connective tissue guy. He, he'll shoot if he needs to shoot. If he doesn't, he, he won't. He's not going to force anything. There was one play where I thought he had a very, very wide open three pointer and he kind of like ah, I didn't, I don't want to. There may have been a potential for pass to the mishada there that he was looking for because he's always looking for the pass. He's always looking to make his teammates make plays for his teammates. And that's part of what makes Derek White so great. But six points, six rebounds, he had four offensive rebounds. Let's start with that. He had two block shots, a steel for a guy that, that took five shots. He was two or four from three, which is nice for a guy who took five shots. Super impactful game. I think his defense in this game was top notch. Not only did he have two incredible chase down blocks, one he got embiid, the other one would he get ubere in transit. Just it looked, they just look like absolute lock dunks and he just comes in and chased down and makes an incredible play. It's just Derrick White in a nutshell. But beyond that, I saw you know, a play where he starts on the block, he chases a guy through a screen, he make the, whoever he was guarding, Maxi probably makes a play, makes a pass, Derek goes to that guy, he's on to that next guy and then that guy makes a pass through the corner. And Derrick White, because it's just the way the defense is set up, he ends up running to the corner. He's just running from left blank block to right corner, guarding three different people in the same possession. And that's just two like very quick decisions, quick passes. And White is there to make the play. Like that's the type of defense. His positioning is incredible. He just knows what he's, he, what he's supposed to be doing. And so after a game where I know I was like geez man, D. White is struggling a little bit. The defense he played in this game, you have to go back and watch because from start to finish, beyond the amazing plays he was Playing incredible, incredible defense. The rebounding, it was almost impossible to understand how good the rebounding was and how bad the Sixers offensive rebounding was. At halftime, the Sixers and shout out to Suichi Terada, who was kind of doing this math as we were standing next to each other, sitting next to each other during the game. The Sixers in the first half shot 12 of 36, 33.3% in the first half. So they missed 24 shots, 24 misses, 0 offensive rebounds. So the Celtics rebounded all of those misses. That is how you build a lead. So you get the Peyton Pritchard going off contribution off the bench, that's going to help you with the lead. You get bench contributions with Jordan and Baylor, that helps you build a lead. And then when they miss, they can't even get themselves extra shots. At halftime. At halftime, The Celtics had 11 more field goal attempts. They were 20 of 47, 11 of 28 from three. The Sixers had 36 shots, 3 of 12 from three. But even if they had hit half of their three pointers, okay, that's three more. So they would have had nine more points. They still would have been down nine and they still would have been way behind, like if they were shot 6 of 12 from 3. The Celtics were 11 of 28. When you give yourself. The Celtics had nine offensive rebounds at halftime. Second chance points were 13 to nothing. You didn't get a second chance point from the Sixers until the third quarter. That level of defense, that level of rebounding is, I mean, there's just impossible, it's impossible for a team to fall behind and be in a hole like that, to climb out of that if you can't get yourself second chances. So that was incredible. And then in, you know, Jalen Brown got going in the second quarter, but the second half was when you got the real kind of explosion where Tatum here, here's Tatum with 30 points, 11 assists and seven rebounds. And I'm sitting here talking about him at the very end of the show at the 25 minute mark because it was an incredible game. And it was the second half when the Celtics really just pushed it to 30. That's when the Tatum and Brown, like, they were, they were just kind of itching to get going. In fact, at halftime, I was sitting there talking to one of the reporters who had said, like, you know, the Celtics tend to get comfortable in a place at a point like this. And I was like, you know, you're right, they do tend to get comfortable. Except at halftime, Tatum and Brown hadn't really gotten going yet. So first half was five points, five points at halftime for Jayson Tatum, eight for Jaylen Brown. In an 18 point game, they had gotten 13 points combined from Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum. So at halftime when it, when the conversation was like, well, they tend to get comfortable, like, no, you know what? They're not going to be comfortable because Jalen and Jason need to get their numbers and they're going to be like, no, we don't. We. We haven't even come close to playing as, as well as we can play. So they were not going to be comfortable. They weren't going to come out and mess around. They, they were looking to get themselves going and they did. So that's, that's. Now before I was saying, like, that's how you build a big lead. This is how you finish off the big lead. With Tatum going nuts in the second half, Jalen going nuts in the second half. The third, the, the third quarter. James. Let's see here. Jason Tatum in the third quarter, 13 points, 4 of 6 shooting. Jason, Jalen Brown, 12 points, 3 of 6 shooting. They won that third quarter. It was some shot, great shot making on both sides. They won that third quarter. They end up getting that lead up to 26. They got it up to 30 in the fourth quarter where Jason just kind of finished things off. He had 12 in the fourth quarter in seven minutes, and that was it. So overall, I mean, what else are you going to say about the Celtics winning by 32? Sam Houser was. Okay, Vuch. Vuch. Listen, Vuch is. I'll say this about Vuch. This is, I feel a little bit of vindication here because this is the exact situation I was talking about in the, at the end of the regular season. You're gonna need him. They've needed him. You know, Keita has not been a real foul trouble guy this year. And now all of a sudden, he's just been in foul trouble over and over and over again. He hasn't been able to stay on the floor in any of these games. And the end of season, working Vuch into the lineup, that's been, that's been huge to get him ready for this spot, to get him in a position here where he can contribute. Nikola Vucovic has been very, very helpful. Has he been awesome? No, he hasn't been awesome, but he's been very, very helpful. He has helped the Celtics win playoff games here. So let's give this man his due. He's. He's played some really, really Important minutes and you get some, you know, important Luca Garza minutes. Like any minutes anybody plays is important. But Vuchevic coming in and, you know, trying, you know, it's tough. It is tough to come off the bench and, and get going when you've been used to you, you're 35 and have played your whole life as a starter. This is tough. You know, traded here at the deadline, getting hurt coming off the bench. It, it's been, it, it takes a minute to get that, to get yourself kind of up to speed on that. And I think he's starting to feel better about how he's playing. So that, that's been, that's been great. So that's it. Celtics win and win convincingly. And now you wait until. When's game five? That is Wednesday. No, wait, today is, it'd be Tuesday. Tuesday night. Tuesday night at 7 o'. Clock. So we're on the every other day. So Tuesday night the Celtics will hopefully close this out and then get to watch the Knicks and Hawks kind of battle it out and hopefully go seven and it'll be great. So come on, Joel Embiid, you know you want to start game five. You know you want to do it. Thanks for watching, everybody. I do appreciate you sticking with me throughout all of these playoff runs. I got bonus podcasts for you throughout the week. I've got all sorts of content for you, so you got to be subscribed to get it all. Whether it's a short, whether it's a bonus podcast, whatever it is, make sure you're listening to it all. Also, make sure you're reading my stuff at Celtics on si, because a lot of it's companion stuff to what I'm talking about and the writing is different than the talking and so there's more stuff that I'm writing than makes it into the podcast and vice versa. So check that stuff all out there and then I would love it if you shared 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.
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John Corrales
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Boston Celtics DOMINATE as Payton Pritchard Shines, Joel Embiid HURTS Sixers in Return
Host: John Karalis
In this episode, host John Karalis (Sports Illustrated, Locked On Podcast Network) breaks down the Boston Celtics’ emphatic 128–96 win over the Philadelphia 76ers in Philadelphia, putting the Celtics up 3–1 in the second-round playoff series. Main themes include Payton Pritchard’s breakout performance, Joel Embiid’s negative impact in his injury return, the Celtics’ bench dominance, defensive mastery, and how Boston can close the series back home.
[02:00–07:00]
[05:45–08:30]
[11:59–17:24]
[21:48–26:45]
[26:46–29:50]
[29:50–31:15]
John Karalis delivers this episode in his trademark analytical, conversational tone—mixing firsthand locker-room insights, X’s and O’s, and light humor (especially in the Pritchard-Reggie banter segments and the tongue-in-cheek “thank you, Embiid” rant). He credits the Celtics’ team effort, especially the bench, shines a light on pivotal defensive sequences and rebounding, and casts the Sixers as stuck by their own strategic choices. Throughout, the message is clear: Boston’s depth, poise, and adaptability are putting them in prime position to close out the series.
This episode is a perfect blend of tactical breakdown and locker-room access for Celtics fans. If you want evidence of the Celtics’ team-oriented dominance, how playoff pressure reveals rotational strengths and weaknesses, and why fans (and John!) are relaxed about a swift series finish—this is a must-listen recap.
Next game: Tuesday night, Game 5 back home in Boston.
Bonus content: Karalis promises more, including a Pritchard one-on-one interview in coming days.