
Boston Celtics drop tight contest to New York Knicks as Jayson Tatum faces his Madison Square Garden demons—and wins a personal battle. Did Joe Mazzulla’s refusal to reveal playoff adjustments cost the team, or is there a bigger strategy at play? John Karalis of Celtics On SI breaks down the Celtics’ defensive approach, the center rotation dilemma with Neemias Queta and Nikola Vucevic, and the surging performances of Payton Pritchard and Baylor Scheierman. Key discussions spotlight Josh Hart’s fourth-quarter heroics, Tatum’s emotional post-injury return, and concerns about playoff matchups in the paint. With Jaylen Brown sidelined and playoff intensity looming, is Boston’s roster truly ready for the battles ahead?
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Boston Celtics Lose to the New York Knicks in a Game Joe Missoula wanted to show us nothing, but Jason Tatum showed us everything. Locked On Celtics Pot Home of the Winners welcome back to the Lockdown Celtics podcast. I'm John Corrales. The Boston Celtics lose to the New York Knicks and still have to wait to clinch the second seed later on in the third segment. I'm going to save the Jayson Tatum stuff for then because he was very open. Open and vulnerable. Jason Tatum is kind of like the theme of the past couple of days and I'll get into that at the third segment where Tatum came away a winner no matter what the scoreboard said. In the second segment, we'll get into concerns over the center spot and some of the positives, but I want to start here with the the biggest part of this loss to me to the Knicks is how the Celtics didn't really make any defensive adjustments that I saw. They didn't come out and play the the type of defense that anybody expected. The we just did a crossover show with Gavin Shaw of Locked on Knicks and we're talking about the Celtics have this ability to put the Mishkeda on Josh Hart, you put a wing on Carl Anthony Towns and then you play everybody else kind of straight up and instead the Celtics played Keda on Cat and played Tatum on Josh Hart and they just kind of rolled with that. And aside from I don't 1 possession 2 a handful at the most. The Celtics stuck with a traditional kind of defense. And as we said in that crossover episode, you play the, the Knicks with a traditional defense and, and they get to do the things that they do well. They'll look good, and they looked pretty good for most of this game. The, the, they came out strong. The Celtics made their run. They, you know, the Knicks kind of came back and it was back and forth. Each team made their runs. And then in the fourth quarter, it was the Knicks that finished stronger later and came away with this win. And Josh Hart was a huge, like the huge reason why in the fourth quarter, Hart finishes the game with a game high 26 points. He shot 5 of 7 from 3, 10 of 15 from the field. It was just overall a huge game for him. The Celtics kind of dared him to shoot and he shot it. And that's my feeling here, is that Joe knows there's, you're gonna need Josh Hart to miss shots and you build up this, hey, you know what? Let Josh shoot. If he beats us, he beats us in a playoff series. Maybe that'll get him to be a little bit more trigger happy and maybe that'll take away from some of the Jalen Brunson shots. It'll take away from the Carl Anthony Town shots. It'll take away from, you know, Mikhail Bridges, take away from OG and Anobi. So I feel like Joe had a plan and the plan was we're not showing you anything, which is always an interesting kind of plan to me because the Celtics have played, I think, every kind of defense that you're going to play. If the New York Knicks staff is worth its salt at all, they have already been compiling Celtics things. If you're a video coordinator for the Knicks, do you not have a separate folder for, for everything the Celtics are doing? Every time you see a Celtics game and they play some zone, you clip it and put it into a folder and you label it Celtic Zone. Whenever you see the Celtics play, you know, a weird switch. Anything, anything different. If you're good at your job, you clip it, you find it, you clip it, you save it for later. And then when you're putting a scout together for the playoffs, you have all of these contingencies, but in the ultimate gamesmanship, the Celtics did not want to give the Knicks anything fresh. No fresh information. No, hey, we just saw that. You want to make them go through their mental Rolodex. You want it to take an extra possession or two. And I kind of understand it. I guess the, the. If you're playing the Celtics and they just showed you in their last regular season game. Oh, yeah, yeah. I remember when they defended us this way. We did this and this was our adjustment. We talked about it after the game and we're going to get right to it. Whereas if you don't show it to them and it takes three or four or five possessions for them to remember, oh yeah, we have this clip. Any one of those possessions could be something that swings a game. Right. Like instead of the Celtics or the Knicks kind of figuring things out and moving on quickly, it could be something that gives the Celtics a run. Two baskets. You know, in a game like this where The Celtics lose 16112 to 106, two baskets earlier in the fourth quarter could easily flip this score. Right. Instead of Baylor Scheireman hitting a three pointer to put the Celtics up by. Was it two or three? Maybe that's. Maybe that's something that puts them up double digits and that could be the difference in this gamesmanship. So Joe didn't show them anything. Now that I think led to a pretty rough finish for the Celtics because they gave up just bucket after bucket. I felt bad for Nami Eshkeda, who has been amazing all season long and who has been, I think obviously one of the. One of the linchpins of the Celtics defense. Defense. He's. He was. He was kind of out on an island. Everybody. They put him on Josh Hart. One possession and they put. They just put Hart as the screener and let Brunson attack Keda and it led to a. I think that one led to a layup. There was a dunk involved, there was a jumper involved, and it was just rapid fire. Just boom, boom, boom. Kada in the actions. Three, four times in a row to the point where V came in and ended up closing the game in the last couple of minutes. And I'll get to Vuvic in a second here because it. I'm not concerned necessarily, but also I'm not. Not concerned with what I saw. But you know what? This is where I'll get to my center concerns. The Celtics had this game an opportunity to win this game. They didn't. They could have if they made some adjustments. And I thought. I think that Joe would rather. Would rather have lost this game without making the adjustments than give the Knicks anything. Obviously no Jaylen Brown and that was part of it. If you had Jalen Brown, this could have gone a lot differently. If they, if this was a playoff game one, this would have gone a lot differently. But Joe didn't want to give them anything. I think that was very obvious. It was very obvious and here we are. But even in the midst of all of that and understanding that things would be different, are we concerned about the centers in the playoffs, especially against the Knicks? We'll explore that when we come back. Today's show is brought to you by BetterHelp. Financial stress is something that a lot of people are carrying right now, and it's not just about numbers. It can affect your sleep. 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And just in case you go cold, FanDuel.com play your game. Thanks for making Lockdown Celtics, your first listen every day, being in every day or joining me every Monday through Friday for podcasts, sometimes two podcasts. I have bonus podcasts all week long, tons of them. So you can listen to any one of those tomorrow. This weekend, the bonus podcast kind of live for a little bit. I have a bonus podcast tomorrow after the Pelicans game, so make sure you're subscribed. Thanks for joining me, by the way. I'm John Corrales. Introduce myself if you're new to the show. I cover the Celtics for Celtics on SI. I've been covering the team for about 20 years now. I've been doing this podcast for 10. So join me on this Celtics journey. So the centers, I I was not thrilled. Even though I know that Neemi will get some help, even though I know that this will go differently, I was not thrilled with how that fourth quarter went for him. The fact that the, the Knicks feel like they can attack him is a little bit concerning, but also it does kind of expose some of his limitations of defending in space and that he hasn't been asked to do that a ton. He. It's not that he's not switchable. He's been able to switch. It's that Brunson can be a lot to cover and it's so hard to kind of, he's so low to the ground, he's so shifty. He changes speeds, he changes pace, he changes directions, and it's going to be hard to ask him to do that. Now, there are things you can do to combat what the Knicks were doing. You put him on Josh Hart and you look for, they look for the, the mismatch. You, you can, you can pre switch, you can scram switch, you can, you can find ways to bait the Knicks into, okay, we're going to attack Kada and you can kind of save yourself, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Now, maybe that's part of the point. Maybe this is all part of Joe's master plan. Maybe this is Joe saying, oh, hey look, here's, here's Nene Keda on an island. Look at how often you can attack him. And it's like, attack, attack, attack, bucket, bucket, bucket, bucket, bucket. And it looks bad. It was a bad stretch for him. It was a really rough stretch for him. But knowing that there are ways to get around that. Okay, maybe, maybe, maybe Joe was just kind of throwing it out there. So the next time the Knicks see it, he sets the trap. So if the Celtics and the Knicks match up in the Second round. That's going to be one of the first things I'm watching for down the stretch. If, if they start putting Keita in the actions, what do the Celtics do? How do they combat that? Everything Joe does here is intentional. And I know that my brain as a podcaster and not an NBA coach, I'm probably lagging behind a little bit. Gotta go rewatch. I gotta think about it some more. Joe has his mentality and I'm just trying to crack the code. I don't think Joe suddenly forgot how to adjust. I don't think Joe suddenly forgot certain things about the defense. I think everything he did in this game was intentional. Now, Vuch was out there and didn't look great in the first half, and then he looked better in the second half. He hit a couple of shots. In fact, Vuch was one of three guys on the team with a positive plus minus. One of them was Sam Houser, who I didn't think played particularly great, but was two of six from three and it was okay. Was okay, but he was a plus one. Peyton Pritchard, who played great until the fourth quarter and then missed some shots and had some turnovers, 23 points for him. He played great. Talk about him in a second. Plus four and Vuch plus one. He was a plus one. Now let's go down quarter by quarter. He was a minus 2 in the first quarter. He was a minus 6 in the second quarter, where he did not look good at all. He was a plus 13 in the third quarter, which. That's where he, he did the most. He had two, three pointers, which, you know, let's cue the hallelujah chorus. Hitting a couple of three pointers was big for Vuch. And then in the fourth quarter, he was a minus. No, he was a plus five. So no, wait, sorry, sorry, sorry. That's first through third. In the fourth quarter, he was a minus four. So that makes sense. And he only. He played six and a half minutes, including in the end, he was in. At the end. Now, I came into this thinking, okay, Kada, to start, you put the, you do the, the, the defense we always talk about with Cat, the wing on Cat and K on Hart. And then V would come in and be able to space and pull Mitchell Robinson away from the rim. And then you see the game kind of progress and you go, okay, Mitchell Robinson's really abusing V. You know, defensively, like, Vuchevic cannot keep Robinson off the boards. He. He's getting just torched in the pick and roll defense. The Pick and roll defense was terrible. Getting dunked on, he was late. Now, some of it might just be Vic needs to get up to speed. And again, I'll reiterate the things I've been saying. I know people are out there talking about, oh, my God, Vuch looks bad and oh, my God, why isn't Garza playing? And really the only legitimate element to Garza should be playing to me is, hey, if you do need him in the playoffs, it'd be really nice to have him kind of stretched out and get him some minutes here to get his cardio up. And maybe that's what the next two games are kind of going to do, or maybe, maybe that's part of what the week of practice is going to do. You just run Garza into the ground to get his cardio up and get him back up to speed. That's the only thing that I think makes any sense right now because I know Garza is going to be ready. I know Vuch. If, if it, if it comes down to it, Joe's not going to let Vucovic go die on the vine. And, you know, he's, he's going to make the change. He's going to do what needs to be done to win. Right. I do trust Joe Missoula to make these decisions so he'll, he'll hit the button and put Luca in the game when he needs to. For now, I thought getting Vuch to, to get those, you know, to hit those shots, those three pointers were huge. Now imagine sitting Vuchevich and he never hits those three pointers. That's a big, that's a big progression for him. But I do have a concern here with, is Vuch going to be better against Karl Anthony Towns? Because Towns isn't going to be crashing the boards. He's not an offensive rebounder. But how does, how does this matchup work now? Maybe, maybe it's, it's for the best. And again, this is why you play Vuch. You, you have to figure out, like, we have theoretical ideas of how things happen, but you put them in practice and, and you need to see it fail. You need to see, oh, my God, this matchup is terrible. You needed to see him get destroyed by Mitchell Robinson because I think everybody thought, hey, you can go out there and guard Mitchell Robinson and keep him off the boards, your big body, and you can stretch him away from the, the, the rim and that opens things up for your drivers on offense. And maybe there's some of that as Vuch gets up to speed. But you really have to consider maybe not maybe more Keita on Mitchell and more Vuch on Cat. Knowing Kate is going to start. But maybe you make a quick sub and you go with something different. You have to be willing to do that in a playoff series. You have to gather that information. This is another reason why you play Vuchevic. You have to, you need to see what's real and what's not. You always go lean on like scientists when you're doing an experiment. Something failing is a positive result. Because now you know, okay, don't do this. It's sometimes you need to know what not to do so you can get down to the results of. Get down to what do you do? Right. Okay, I'm going to do this. No, that exploded. Not going to do that anymore. That's off the table. You're narrowing things down. It's part of the process. So I don't, I'm struggling right now to process how much of what we saw is a concern versus how much of it is. Joe didn't do 10 things that he could have done. And again, no Jaylen Brown, which does change the dynamic a lot. How much of this was just the Celtics didn't show their hand, they didn't, they didn't tip their hand, they didn't show their cards. And it was, it was just Joe Gamesmanship. Was it Joe Gamesmanship? We'll see positives. Peyton Pritchard, Baylor Charman. I'll talk about that when we come back. And Jason Tatum was the big winner in this game no matter what the scoreboard said. That's next. Today's show is brought to you by prize picks. The playoff push is heating up and tournament hoops are here. 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your first listen every day. Thank you for being in every day or being with me for every bonus podcast of which there were many here this week. If you're an everydayer, maybe you want to be part of the everyday or club $5 a month or $50 a year. You get ad free audio access to our Discord server in game chats. So check it out@lockdown celtics.supercast.com Lockdown Celtics. So positives in this Peyton Pritchard. I mentioned him already. He was a plus four in a game. He lost by six. So it was a big, you know, nice positive 23.6 assists, shot 10 of 23 of 8 from three hit a couple of offensive rebounds, which is always impressive. Just two turnovers. He was, he was huge in that third quarter. There were moments where, you know a couple of turnovers that not ideal, not great. And there there's always going to be that little feeling of is, is he going to be on the floor in the fourth quarter when it matters most? Because he's going to be the guy that they target, but he's going to have stretches in these games that could be game changers. And Pritchard is one of the reasons why they had a chance to win this game. Baylor Charman is the other reason. He had 20 points, which ties a career high six of seven from three. He was doing the big thumbs up. He had the tongue wagging. He had the mullet flying. I mean, he was having a blast. I say it every time I talk about Baylor Shireman. I don't know if I've seen another, a more confident player out there. That dude is just having a blast. And obviously he's not going to shoot six of seven from three any, you know, in all of these games. But this was a big game and a big moment for him and he responded, you know, at Madison Square Garden that it was nice to see. It's nice to see him kind of thriving out there. It's just one of those things that makes you trust him a little bit more. Everybody knows that this was a big game and also I think everybody knew on that team that if you're going to win, it was going to have to be a very, very much offensive driven win. Knowing that, hey, we're not adjusting on defense. When Joe, when a coach says we're doing what we do here, this is going to be the only thing that we do for the reasons that, you know, I've laid out before. So the only way to win when you do that is, is to just do it perfectly, do it well and execute. You have to go out there and execute. Baylor gave the Celtics a chance to win with his shooting and executed. He did a lot of good things. He had four rebounds. He had an offensive rebound. He was, was generally, generally really good out there in a lot of different phases of the game. So I, I trust Baylor a little bit more when it comes to the playoffs and being in a moment like that. So that was good to see. Just quickly, Namishkeda, like I said with his. His fourth quarter was bad, but. And he got into foul trouble, which another little concern I did. Again, why you play Vuch? Because Neemi's in foul trouble. You're gonna need Vuch, you're gonna need Luca, you're gonna going to need vouch. So this was a lot of reasons why the plan to integrate Vuchovic is, is exactly the way he should be doing it. Six offensive rebounds, though, for Kada, if he wasn't in foul trouble. There are a lot of things you can say if they didn't happen. Celtics would have won if they. If he wasn't in foul trouble, they would have had a chance to win this. If Tatum had a, A, a decent shooting night or didn't turn the ball over six times, they could have won. If they shot anything next to normal early in this game. 3 of 12 in the first quarter, 2 of 9 in the second quarter. It wasn't until the third quarter where they hit 7 of 13, that they were able to kind of get back on track. But if they shot a normal percentage in the first half, maybe they would have won this game. So there are still a lot of reasons to look at and go, if you had Jalen Brown, if you had a little bit more normalcy, they would have won. But Baylor gave him a chance anyway. So shout out to Baylor. Shout out to Peyton. Now. Also, Jason Tatum, he has been very open and honest and vulnerable about his whole journey here. And I wrote a story. It's already up on Celtics on si. I hope you go read it. It's titled the The Celtics lost, But Jason Tatum was the biggest winner of the night. And he spoke after the game, talking about how this. You know, the quote. I wanted to win and play great, but more importantly, I just kind of wanted to walk off the court on my own two feet. And the analogy that I made was that msg, when. When Tatum tore his Achilles, MSG kind of became a haunted house for him. There's a spirit in there, his spirit that had unfinished business. He needed to walk off that floor. You know, the last time he was there, he was carried off. He was helped off and rolled out in a wheelchair and was in New York. Stayed in New York and had surgery the next day. Traumatic experience. He needed to go back there. He. He was very well aware of the spot on the floor. He knew exactly when he was standing on it, walking over it. He remembers everything very clearly. And to him, it was very, very important to go do that and to walk off that floor at the end and check that. That mental box. So when I say Jason Tan was a winner, man, I don't even care about the final score. And to be honest, I don't really care about the final score because I expect the Celtics to come out on the back to. Back to. For Jalen Brown to. To come home. Come home to Boston and lead the Celtics to a win over the Pelicans. Pelicans aren't playing everybody. They're playing the young guys. Celtics should beat the Pelicans and clinch the second seed and be Done with all of this. I don't really, not really worried that the Celtics are going to lose two more games in a row and the Knicks are going to close us out, and the Celtics are going to fall to three. That doesn't bother me at all. So Tatum doing this now, making, making this decision to play here, considering how he was talking after the game, that's the most important part of this whole thing. More than anything that I've spoken about. I'm saving the best for last. The most important thing for last. Tatum coming out here and playing and getting through it and standing in that locker room and talking about it afterwards and walking to the bus and walking to the plane. That's all the most important thing. He comes out of this a winner. He said it today was important for me. I'm glad I did it. I feel a lot better today. Even though we lost, that's quote. I'm definitely checking off a lot of boxes. This was one of the last few. The playoffs are coming up soon, but this is one of the ones that was at the top. And the biggest thing for me is by being back there on the floor, there's all of a sudden this warped sense of time that he talked about where this big, long, grueling process, starting with, like, barely being able to move a toe and working your way up to, hey, he did an unassisted calf raise to, hey, he's walking on the floor, and there's a light jog and all of this stuff, all of these steps, and it's just been such a long, arduous journey. Then you get out onto the floor, and this, this feeling washes over you where you go, okay, I'm back. I'm back here. I'm standing on the spot, and I'm, I'm standing. I'm okay. And he said it. I remember the incident like it happened yesterday. So today was the first time that it felt like it kind of went by fast. All of a sudden, that long, slow journey became snap, boom, I'm back. I'm back at msg. Was it real? Was it a fever dream? All of a sudden, everything just becomes a blur. And when you talk about time heals all wounds, this is the beginning of a whole lot of healing over time where Tatum has now. Okay, I was back at msg. I walked off the floor at msg. I, I, I did it. I'm here. Okay, now I'm back. There's a weight that was lifted. Exercising a demon, as it were. So I think that was, that was more important to Tatum than even I realized. And whatever happened in this game, I'm just glad that Tatum had the opportunity to go out there and do this, feel it, and now move on from it. Walking off that floor, leaving msg, coming home, that's such a mental. Just closing. Closing a loop, a time loop so you can move forward. It really. It really feels like a. Almost like a Rick and Morty. You hit the portal gun, you step into an alternate universe where suddenly you're broken and can't walk, and then you hit the portal gun. Boom, and you're back at msg, and it's like you never left. But, you know, you've experienced experience. This other stuff, I think. I think it's important. So I'm glad. I'm happy for him. I'm legitimately happy for Tatum, like, going through all of this stuff. I'm happy that he's sharing this. I'm happy that he's being expressive about it. It's important to understand, because it's also important to understand that these guys are. They're. They're people. They're real people. They're human beings. Jason Tam's a human being. He's an extraordinarily talented human being when it comes to the game of basketball, but he has the same human emotions. He's not a robot. He has the same thing. Anybody that has had any sort of trauma, when you go back to the site of that. That trauma, it's triggering, and I'm glad that he was able to go through it and get past it, and I'm curious to see how this impacts his game moving forward. He didn't play great. He had a great stat line. As far as raw numbers go, 24 points, 13 rebounds, 8 assists, but 7 of 22 shooting, 2 of 10 from 3. He did go to the line and hit 8 of 10. 13 rebounds is great. It's another. It's another double double. The eight assists is great. The six turnovers are not. But the turnovers and the missed shots and all of that, I. I want to see if the. If this helps him turn a corner with that stuff, with the efficiency, with the focus. So good for him. Celtics lose. Not too worried about it. Expect them to. To clinch against New Orleans. They. Then they'll start Max Shulga against Orlando on Sunday. That's. That's my expectation. So we'll. We'll see how it goes. But thank you for being here. I appreciate it. This is my one podcast for Friday. I'm going to do a podcast Friday night. After the Pelicans game. So you'll have that on Saturday, but there'll be no second bonus podcast on Friday. If you miss one of the other bonus podcasts, go ahead and check that out because I have reactions to Brad Stevens talking to the media. Of reactions to Bill Chisholm talking to the media. Tons of bonus podcasts this week. Let me know what you think about all of those in the comments section on YouTube. Make sure you're subscribed to get all of this content whenever I drop it, all of it. It's going to be on all the major podcast platforms. Going to be on YouTube now. Please 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.
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Episode: Boston Celtics LOSE, but Jayson Tatum WINS, while Joe Mazzulla keeps SECRETS
Host: John Karalis
Summary by Podcast Summarizer AI
In this episode, John Karalis breaks down the Celtics’ 112-106 loss to the New York Knicks—a game where Boston’s record matters less than the mind games being played. The Celtics pulled back on strategic reveals, with head coach Joe Mazzulla opting not to make key adjustments, apparently to avoid giving the Knicks any fresh video before the playoffs. The episode also spotlights Jayson Tatum, who, despite the loss, experiences a deeply personal victory by returning to Madison Square Garden after last year’s devastating Achilles injury.
(Start – 13:45)
“Joe would rather have lost this game without making the adjustments than give the Knicks anything.”
— John Karalis (12:33)
(13:46 – 25:01)
“Everything Joe does here is intentional...I don’t think Joe suddenly forgot how to adjust...I think everything he did in this game was intentional.”
— John Karalis (15:07)
(25:02 – 29:50)
(29:51 – 37:10)
“I remember the incident like it happened yesterday. So today was the first time that it felt like it kind of went by fast. All of a sudden, that long, slow journey became — snap, boom, I’m back. I’m back at MSG. Was it real? Was it a fever dream?...There’s a weight that was lifted.”
— John Karalis narrating Tatum’s reflections (34:33)
“Joe would rather have lost this game without making the adjustments than give the Knicks anything.”
(John Karalis, 12:33)
“Something failing is a positive result...Sometimes you need to know what not to do so you can get down to what do you do.”
(John Karalis, 20:32)
“I wanted to win and play great, but more importantly, I just kind of wanted to walk off the court on my own two feet.”
(Jayson Tatum, as told by John Karalis, 31:35)
Karalis is pragmatic, analytical, and empathetic. He trusts Joe Mazzulla’s “masterplan,” credits players for their growth even in defeat, and sees Tatum’s emotional hurdle as a narrative bigger than a single regular season result.
This episode offers classic Karalis: deep team analysis, tactical breakdowns, and an appreciation for the athlete’s humanity. While the Celtics lost the game, the real “win” was Tatum’s mental closure and the preservation of strategic secrets for games that will really count.
Summary by Podcast Summarizer AI. Listen to the full episode for more context and insight!