
Boston Celtics’ road trip momentum stalls as fatigue, missed opportunities, and cold shooting doom their night against the Denver Nuggets. With Jayson Tatum’s return looming, can the team snap back into contender mode? John Karalis of Celtics On SI dissects the loss, spotlighting issues like the Celtics’ inability to feed the hot hand—despite Derrick White’s second-quarter surge—and Jaylen Brown’s ongoing tussle with officials. Key analysis covers the impact of travel, shooting woes (12-of-43 from three), live-ball turnovers, and the third-quarter collapse when Boston failed to capitalize on bonus opportunities. Karalis evaluates Neemias Queta's defensive effort, Boston’s stagnant bench production, and previews Tatum’s imminent return, asking: will his comeback restore the Celtics’ edge before they face the Brooklyn Nets? Don’t miss this essential Celtics breakdown.
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I'm John Corrales. I'm a beat writer covering the Celtics for Sports Illustrated's Celtics on si. I've been doing a version of this job for about 20 years now. I've been doing this podcast for 10. I also have a couple of books out about the Celtics, so check those out as well. Today's show is brought to you by 5 Hour Energy. Have your cake and drink it, too. Birthday cake flavor is back. No fork needed. Vanilla E. Cakey flavor. Caffeinated kick, no sugar. It's party time. Order now at 5hourenergy.com or on Amazon. Celtics lose to Denver 103.84. I'm sorry, the 4020 dream is over. If you don't know what 4020 is, it's the concept created by Phil Jackson that championship contenders win 40 games before they lose 20. The Celtics are at 38 wins and now 20 losses. So this would have been 39 if they had won this game, and then 40 would have been The Brooklyn game, if they can go back and win that game. Now they are 38 and 20 and I guess that means they're no longer contenders. I don't know. We'll see. They are going to potentially get Jason Tatum back, so that might change the 40, 20 thing for them a little bit. We'll talk about Tatum later. In the third segment we'll get into Namish Kada, who did, I think a decent job might have been, might have been their overall best player in this game. But you know, I don't know. We'll see. But why the Celtics have trouble feeding the hot hand. But let's get into the, the turning point of this game. Well, actually, let's just start at the beginning where I thought the Celtics played well. They, at least for two and a half, two and three quarter quarters, they, they were right there. It was a back and forth game. They, they couldn't take advantage of the opportunities that they had early. They weren't hitting shots. You could tell pretty quickly that some of, some of the shots they were short. Like they, they ultimately ended up shooting. What was it, 12 of 43 from three. So it's just about 28%. So they missed 31 three pointers. 18. I counted 18 of those were short. So 18 of the 31 misses were short. So that's what, 13 misses that you had. Some of them go left, some of them go right, some of them went long. There was one play where I could tell right away that the Celtics were not going to, I don't think they, they were going to recover from their, their tough shooting. Second quarter, Ron Harper Jr. Top of the key, misses short. Then he gets to the corner and it felt like he overcompensated because he missed long. Both of them were right on. And that's, that's the, the killer here. I know a lot of people will say, hey man, 12 of 43, you missed 31 three pointers. Maybe try something else. But when you're short, the shot feels good coming out of your hand. And as a shooter, you're like, that shot is right online. This is the, this is the dichotomy here between confidence as a shooter and being the fan, being like you're missing, you've missed all of these shots in a row. You're shooting 20 something percent from 3. Why do you keep doing it? I'm sure some of you are sitting there saying like, yeah John, why do they keep doing it? But how many times have we seen a guy be cold and then all of a Sudden hit three, four in a row, and you're like, that's why you keep shooting. 18 shots. Fell short, front rimmed. That means you were literally this close, an inch away from that shot, going over the front of the rim and falling in 18 times. Now, I didn't expect them to shoot 30 of 43 either, but of those 18 that were short, if you just get a. An extra little bit on those, then how many of. How many of those actually fall? How many of them just. If your legs weren't just toast and you got normal strength on your shots, how many of those fall? That. That's where the. When you're a shooter and it's there, it's so frustrating because you feel like it's. It's right. Oh, just. I got it, I got it. I'm dialed in. It's right there. I just got to get a little more. A little more on it. But then you put a little more on it and it's like, oh, wait, too much. You overcompensate. And then that's where you get some of the long ones. So even the ones that went long, I kind of count them in the fatigue, the top being tired, and it's just hard to tell a guy who's right there just barely missing, but the shot is online. It's dead center. You can't tell those guys to stop shooting because they feel. Feels good. It's just missing a little bit on it. If a guy's missing, like all over the place, you know, air, balls and all that stuff, you can sit there and be like, okay, look, dude, you're. You're just. You're not even close. You're not even dialed in. You're. You're just do something else or sit down, you know, like. But that's not what this was. So they were there and they were within striking distance. The leads were going back and forth. It was. I thought they had a chance. In fact, right before the Nuggets made their run, I said, I tweeted out, the Celtics just need to keep themselves afloat and get to the non jokic minutes because Jamal Murray left the game after the first quarter. He was sick. He played what, eight, nine minutes, 7:51. So just about eight minutes and didn't do a whole lot. He was sick and then he came out. So I was like, okay, look, third quarter, it was a back and forth. Celtics were up one, up three, down one, whatever. And just. Just get. Just get to the end of the third quarter. Just get there. Wait for Jokic to sit and then just have a, a three minute run. I really thought the way the game was flowing through the first quarter and most of the second quarter said if you could just get to that non jokic minutes and make a little bit of a run. Neither team was showing the ability to get any separation when everybody was on the floor together. But then the, the Nuggets just turned it on and it, they, they reached another level that the Celtics couldn't reach. And I, I saw, I forget who it was and I apologize. It was one of the Denver writers that characterized it perfectly. The Celtics were running low in this game and the Nuggets turned it up. They turned up the physicality in that third quarter stretch and just drained everything the Celtics had left. So by the time you get into the, it was 11 oh at the end of the third quarter and by the time you get into the fourth quarter, the Celtics just didn't have that little oomph, that little something that I was, I was kind of banking on. So that, that I think was, I mean that was obviously where the Celtics lost it. The, the Nuggets pulled away. So in that sense you just, hey, look, it's. They'd won nine of ten, they'd won four in a row. The road trip was perfect to that point. It's a three. They, they go home three and one on the trip. You can't expect them to sweep road trips like that. It's still a good trip. It's still a better than good. It was a great trip and you ran out of gas. Third game in four nights with the fourth game. I mean the third game being a back to back in Denver. Like I credit them for, for putting up the fight that they did. I do think the looks that they got were good but just didn't have it. And I think one of the things they get away from is feeding the hot hand. I had a problem with this the other night when it was against LA where I thought the game could have been a lot easier if they just kept feeding Sam Houser and this one, Derrick White. And this is the second time where I thought like I did a podcast, I forget what game it was. Maybe it was New York was the New York game where Derek was having a decent game. And I asked them directly, like, hey, when you're doing well, do you feel like you should be more aggressive on a night where the rest of the team doesn't have it? Kind of similar situation. Let's dig into that when we come back. Today's show is brought to you by Five Hour Energy. It is time for the Five Hour Energy flavor draft. 18 different flavors to choose from including new options like Confetti Craze, Fruity Rainbow or Cotton Candy. There is something for everyone. The board has set the flavors already and I've got my number one pick for the five Hour Energy Flavor Draft. Now five Hour Energy Shots give you a boost with zero sugar and they have a lot of upcoming flavor innovations planned. So let's get into the picks here. I'm going to consider this a redraft. Last last week I did grape because kind of reminded me of my childhood. I'm looking at pomegranate which is a nice deep, slightly tart pomegranate flavor. It's got subtle fruit bitterness for complexity. Balances sweetness with a dry finish which is nice. There's Watermelon which is cool, crisp and caffeinated. Who doesn't love a watermelon melon flavor? 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They got into that fourth quarter and just, just didn't have it. Once. Once one team got separation, the other just was never able, gonna to. Never going to be able to kind of catch back up that, that I felt that in the game, I felt that flow of the game. I was hoping would be Boston. The Nuggets gave the Celtics some chances early on. The Celtics just couldn't capitalize. When I talk about fatigue kicking in, that's where a lot of the other things start to go wrong. Like think about, well, you know what, here's a good example. Me right now doing this podcast trying to get through those ad reads. If you're on the ad free version with the everydayers club, you didn't hear what I just did, but I'm tired. This is a quarter of three in the morning and I know podcasters, we love to tell you how late we're up and all that stuff, but I'm tired and sometimes the words just aren't coming out. I'm having these uncharacteristic mistakes that I'm making Where I just. My brain is stopping. I'm like, okay, keep talking, John. Or I'm trying to say words, and they're not coming out right. And that's a great example comparison to what the Celtics. Their whole thing during this road trip was the defense, the rebounding. I wrote about it on Celtics on si, where this, the defense and rebounding has been phenomenal. They've been the best defensive team in the league this month. They've been the best rebounding team in the league this month. It's been incredible to watch those weaknesses kind of become strengths. But once you lose your legs, once you get to that fatigue, all of a sudden, the uncharacteristic mistakes, the turnovers, 14 turnovers, live ball turnovers, gets Denver out into transition. That's a problem. That was part of why they made their run. The rebounding, the Celtics, the rebound, that's effort, and the effort wasn't there. And 14 offensive rebounds, 23 second chance points for Denver. That's not something the Celtics have been allowing during this stretch. The. Obviously, the shooting is part of it as well. But the Celtics weren't even crashing the offensive boards. They had. They had nine and, you know, a couple for Sam Houser, three for Derrick White. Neemi had zero. Is that right? Zero offensive rebounds? Yeah, all periods. Zero offensive rebounds for Nami Escada, one for Nicola Vuchovic. So this is, you know, uncharacteristic stuff. When, when the fatigue is setting in, that's. That's the first thing that. That goes goes away. The stuff that you normally expect, things just start to get sloppy. But hey, second quarter, Derrick White was great. He, you know, took half of his shots, scored 18 points, 6 of 7 shooting in the second, 4 or 5 from 3. Now you get into halftime, and this is, this is the tough part. Like, once you get into halftime, a lot of the moment, momentum, see, tired, got. Got all tongue tied, Momentum goes away. But third quarter, just four shots. O of four, O of three, didn't get into any sort of rhythm. And fourth quarter, one shot. So third quarter was four shots. Where. Where is. Where's the. The. The Celtics feeding the hot hand. Getting a guy like that in rhythm, I just want to see that a little bit more. When a guy has it going, the. The Celtics don't. They're not great at saying, well, we. We see this guy's got it going, let's just run a little bit more through him. Let's try to keep that. That groove. And I do want to ask Joe about this, because the the, the way the Celtics run their off, they don't overreact to things and they're kind of discipline in just, hey, we are going to drive, we're going to make the right read and that's all we're going to do. And that, that's incredible discipline. But there has to be a little allowance for, hey man, we all, we all suck shooting. And Derek has at least some. Has demonstrated some ability to hit shots tonight. Let's just run a few more things for him and let's just see. And I'll repeat myself from the other night. It's not just getting him shots. It's using the overreaction to the defense who will be looking at Derrick White and saying, oh crap, that's. That's the one guy who's hitting shots. We have to go react to him, use that to generate some easier looks. And maybe that's. Maybe that's getting to the rim, maybe that's getting to the mid range. Maybe it's something that Derek can help generate some of those better looks just from his gravity, from his. From teams overreacting, defenders overreacting to him being the hot hand. But run some stuff for him specifically. I would have liked to have seen that Celtics, it's. It's almost like they're too disciplined to feed the hot hand, which is kind of hard to say, but I think that's kind of like the best way to put it. Jalen Brown, 23 points, 11 rebounds. It was great to see him get 11 rebounds. He's still rebounding like a monster. He had three block shots and three assists, but he had four turnovers and 7 of 21 shooting, 1 of 6 from 3. Jalen gets into these moods even when he's got a good point. The officiating kind of. Yes, he got fouled on some plays and he should. They should have called those fouls. No doubt Jalen has valid complaints when it comes to the fouls. However, you get caught up in that and you just get a little too close to Luka Doncic territory, where it's just like, okay, buddy, can we just get back? Just get back. They're not changing the call in that moment. They're not. No matter what you do, they're not changing that call in that moment. Can you find another spot? Like, all I'm saying is get back. Get back on defense. You know, wait till a. At least wait till the dead ball or you have the ball when you've defended, if they've made a shot or you've missed and rebounded. Then say something. But don't, don't turn around, complain, and then be like, you know, behind the play. You just, I don't like seeing that stuff. And he does it a little too much for my team. I understand that. The, you know, it's frustrating as all hell to get fouled and not have it go your way. And you, you want to come out and carry your team through these, these rough patches. And if you're getting fouled, obviously that's going to lead to some of the turnovers and that's going to lead to some of the misses. But come on, I just want to see less yapping with the officials and more getting back on defense and figuring, figuring out another way to make a point. He made his point. And then in the third quarter, they came out. In fact, the third quarter, the beginning of the third quarter, I have a problem with another thing the Celtics just don't do well is attack when they should be attacked, when. When the situation says, oh, now is the time to really be aggressive. Sometimes they don't do that. I'll talk about that next. We'll get into Kata and we'll get into Tatum when I come back. Today's show is brought to you by Indeed. I know it's tough right now. 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Thank you for making Lockdown Celtics your first listen. Every day you're an everydayer. Join me on the Everydayer Club. It's@lockdown celtics.supercast.com you get ad free audio compare compatible with all major podcasting apps, Spotify, Apple, all of that. It's available. So, okay, you got that. And then you got the Discord server, which gives you access to live chats for Celtics fans, for NBA fans. So check it out wherever you get. Check it out. Unlocked on celtics.supercast.com Sorry again. Tired words. Struggling. So third quarter. This part also bothered me in this game.755 to go in the third quarter, right? So we're just four minutes into the quarter, five fouls already. So Jalen had made his point with the officials. He started getting really aggressive, and they started giving him the calls. He gets to the line, he's drawing a bunch of fouls. The Nuggets commit their fifth foul. Jokic commits the team's fifth foul with 755 to go. Nimish Kata gets two bonus free throws. The Celtics are in the bonus for nearly eight minutes, and those two Keda free throws are. Are the only bonus free throws that the Celtics got. The only other free throws they got came from a shooting foul, and Jalen shot a couple later on in the quarter. That has to change that. The Celtics need to be better at when, when that's happening, you just have to search out like, hey, they're. They're in the bonus. This is an opportunity for us to. To start. First of all, you're cold. You're not hitting a damn thing. Get to the free throw line. This is a chance to get to the line. So run some stuff, run some actions. Do something to get into the teeth of the defense. Challenge them. They don't want to foul. They don't want to put you at the line. Challenge them. I understand that you make a read, you make the right play, and a lot of Times, okay, that, hey, the right play was that three pointer and I get that. But sometimes there are exceptions to every rule. There are exceptions to everything. So this, I think qualifies as an exception. You're in the bonus and you can't hit a thing. Let's, let's just work on getting, getting into the paint. Let's work on attacking. Let's work on. Let's just get. Draw some files. Somebody, somebody start grifting. Somebody like just Jalen, just do your thing. Just keep going, keep going, keep going. You know, get into the. Do something to attack. They could have, they could have shot. They shot 18 free throws. Both teams did. The Celtics could have shot 28 and could have been all the third quarter and that could have changed the game. So maybe you combine everything into. Let's run some stuff for Derek White to get downhill. And Derek, let's just get into the teeth of things. Let's start challenging them and see maybe you can get to the line, you know, so that's, that's a weakness that the Celtics have had. I, I just don't like it. They need to do it more. Okay. Namish Keda was, I thought he was really good, just running through some of these box score things. Keda, 10 points, just four rebounds, one block, which was a nice block, but I thought the defense on Jokic was actually pretty good. They ran a couple of different guys. I'm going to be very interested in what the matchup data says, but I thought Keda did a decent job on Jokic. Jokic scored 30, but on 28 shots, the efficiency wasn't there. He took 13 three pointers, only hit four. He did not shoot well. I mean, it's pretty amazing that he had 30 points, 12 rebounds and six assists. And it's not really his best game. I thought Kata did a good job there. So Keda defensively was, was really good. Vuch, I know there's a lot of elements to this game. The Celtics got five points out of Vuch and Peyton Pritchard combined. That's a problem. Vuch 1 of 7, 04 from 3. Pritchard 1 of 6, 1 of 3 from 3. Just bad, bad, bad, bad all the way around. Pritchard, after all of the praise, has had a couple of bad games. So it happens. But you know, the Celtics get five points off of the bench. Now, obviously that changed in garbage time, but through, by the time it got to garbage time was really only five points off the bench. That's. That's bad. That's. That's that's bad. That's my analysis. That's bad. 5.5 points off the bench is, is not good, especially when Tim Hardaway Jr. Has 14 himself off the bench for the Nuggets. So. All right, that's the game. Celtics going to come back. They're going to play this Brooklyn, Brooklyn on Friday. First game back from this trip. They're already kind of sluggish. We'll see how that goes. But we're getting closer to Jason Tatum return. I gotta touch on this. The report was from Sham Sharania, who said that he's hearing Jason Tatum is a full go. I could have told you Jason Tatum is a full go in practice, in, you know, in scrimmages and all of that. Not, not that they're practicing much, but Tatum being a full go is. Yeah, we know he's a full go because he's, he's working towards a return. He's scrimmaging and ramping up that. So. But the fact that it's getting to. To Shams Tatum's agent or, I don't know, maybe it's Drew Hanlon or maybe it's a member of his family. Somebody's feeding Shams the information saying, yeah, Tatum is going, he's. He's full go. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. It's kind of what we've been seeing and hearing. Once he's ready and as the reporting goes, once he feels like Jason Tatum, once he's ready, he'll come back. And that's, that's my expectation. That's, that's my read of the situation. He's scrimmaging, he's playing against probably the second unit guys. And that's why it was in that picture from that, that the Celtics tweeted out. That's why it's Jordan Walsh and Luca Garza and all of that. It's. It's those guys that are going out there to scrimmage and get some, some extra work, the guys who aren't playing much. So, yeah, Tatum is, is working his way back and once Tatum is himself, he'll be, he'll be ready to play. He'll be ready, he'll be back, and we'll see him playing. It's going to be soon. Everything is pointing to it being soon. So I've, I've been saying 3-4-6, something like that seventh, whatever it is, that week since like the beginning. I gotta go back and find my. Where. The earliest part of me saying Jason Tatum's coming back in March. I gotta go find that and play it because I know I've been saying march, March, March, March, March. So that's still the case. We got. He's. I don't think he's coming back against Brooklyn. Sorry, Tom, but we'll see. Maybe he will. I think it's going to be in a week or two, so we'll see. But he's a full go for scrimmages now. It's a matter of getting through the soreness, making sure mentally you're ready to go. And Tatum will go. Tatum will play and it will play soon. That's my expectation. We'll be back tomorrow. Tom will join me. We'll dig a little deeper into all of this, so make sure you're subscribed. Watch the show on YouTube. Shows available everywhere podcasts exist. So thank you for listening. Apologies for the tired slurry. I trust me, this is just a product of it being three in the morning and not not three drinks in. It's just how it is when you're covering a West Western game on the East Coast. But thank you for being here with me throughout it all. Now, please share the podcast. Tell everybody they should be listening to and watching the Lockdown Celtics podcast. Here on the Lockdown Podcast Network is your team. Every day,
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Host: John Karalis
Date: February 26, 2026
In this episode, John Karalis breaks down the Boston Celtics' tough 103–84 road loss to the Denver Nuggets—a defeat that snapped their win streak and ended their hopes for the vaunted “40-20” contender threshold. Karalis analyzes the Celtics’ struggles with shooting, fatigue’s impact, a lackluster bench effort, and underlines areas where the team failed to capitalize during key stretches. He also provides an update on Jayson Tatum’s imminent return and highlights strong individual performances, including Namish Kata’s showing against Nikola Jokic.
Celtics fans can expect deeper analysis and reactions in the next episode, as John Karalis promises to revisit these themes with guest Tom and answer questions about Boston’s bounce-back prospects.