← Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
Boston Celtics SURVIVE James Harden Scare, HOLD On in Wild Clippers Thriller
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Boston Celtics survive furious James Harden rally to edge LA Clippers 121-118. Is this gritty win a preview of the team's true playoff resilience? John Karalis breaks down the Celtics' rollercoaster victory, spotlighting Jaylen Brown's 33-point, 13-rebound effort, Payton Pritchard and Derrick White's timely shooting, and Jordan Walsh's tenacious defense. The analysis examines how Boston built a 24-point lead, nearly squandered it behind fouls and second-chance points, then reasserted control with clutch execution in the fourth quarter. Tyronn Lue's praise for Walsh and Harden’s epic fourth quarter raise tough questions about Boston's late-game poise. Can Joe Mazzulla’s squad clean up defensive lapses and missed layups to stay atop the NBA standings? With back-to-back games against the Brooklyn Nets looming, John Karalis of Boston Sports Journal explores the Celtics’ evolving identity, key areas for improvement, and why this hard-fought triumph could matter more than the scoreboar...
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Learn more@kia.com Sportage Hybrid Kia Movement that inspires New Balance Hoops is changing the game with a roster built for the future. Aaron Neesmith, Tyrese Maxey, Zach Lavine, Cooper Flagg is the newest NBA draft pick and Cam Brink who's raising the bar for women's basketball. Whether it's the Hezilo V2 for quick cuts, the two way V5 for all around play, or the Kawai 4 for those who never stop climbing, New Balance Hoops makes shoes built for every player. Visit new balance.com basketball to explore more. James Harden tried to steal this one from the Celtics, but they did just enough to hold on. I'll tell you why this win is a bigger deal than it might seem right now on the Locked On Celtics podcast. Huh? Yep, be ever ready. It's the seas. Who else could it be? What they gonna say now screaming like J.T. corralis? We kept the madness every game, every practice, prime time Depp and D White on the sideline Renin J's how we started raising ban is how we finish Locked On Celtics Pod Home of the Winners welcome back to the Lockdown Celtics Podcast right here on the Lockdown Podcast Network. Word is your team every day your team is the Boston Celtics and I talk about them Monday through Friday on this podcast. Bonus podcast on the weekends when they play. Except for this Friday because I'm going to be out of town for a wedding so that's going to be the only one I miss. But every game, every podcast besides that one. So subscribe wherever you get your podcast. They're free. They're available everywhere. The show is obviously on YouTube. You can get to the comment section there. Share your thoughts with me. John Corrales, Beat writer for Boston Sports Journal. I've been covering this team for about 20 years doing this podcast for 10 and I've written a couple of books about the Celtics. Today's show is brought to you by Game time. Download the GameTime app, create an account, use the code LOCKDOWN NBA for $20 off your first purchase of tickets. Maybe Celtics tickets for something I want to Also thank you for making the Lockdown Podcast Network the number one sports podcasting network on the planet. Today on the number one Celtics podcast on the planet, we're talking about the Boston Celtics surviving against the LA Clippers 121 to 118. Later on, I'll tell you why this matters and why this might be a bigger deal than you might think. I'll get into some of the individual stuff like Jordan Walsh, complimentary stuff from Tyron Lue. After the game on Jordan Walsh, I thought I'll save that for later. Jaylen Brown, all of that. Let's just start with the game. Let's start with the beginnings. The meat of it all here where the Celtics had a 24 point lead with nine minutes to go in the third quarter. Okay, that doesn't mean much in in Today's NBA obviously 10 point lead with 89 seconds to go. And yet there there was James Harden on the left wing left above the break with a chance to tie the game and send it into overtime. It was partly Boston's fault, partly some luck, but the Celtics managed to survive this. Harden was terrible for most of this game and then he just picked it up with an 18 point fourth quarter. He finished with 37. So basically half of those points in the fourth quarter. Doing his usual thing getting to the free throw line with some questionable foul calls. But he got to the line 15 times. Typical James Harden night. But the Celtics did this to themselves in the third quarter where offensive rebounds, fouls, they just kind of crushed their own momentum. They got up to 24 and things started to fall apart a little bit. The Clippers want a little bit of a run. The Celtics were fouling, putting them on the line. In the third quarter. The Clippers were 11 of 12 from the line. The Celtics were over two from the line in the third quarter. Second Chance Points the The Celtics allowed three offensive rebounds. They allowed 12 second chance points in the third. The Celtics had one offensive rebound for three. Second chance points. So the Celtics didn't match what they were giving up. And this is, this is the recipe for disaster for Boston. They were fouling. They put the, the Clippers on the line. So here are the Clippers in a situation here where the game was going exactly like I thought it would because the Clippers are obviously a west coast team. They played in Dallas. They played a double overtime game in Dallas on Friday. This was a day and a half later. So you get one day to recover and then you have to wake up. 3:30 game guys are warming up around 1:30, 1 o'. Clock. That is what, 10:00am Los Angeles time. They haven't had time to adjust to, to the new time zone yet. They're basically just waking up. This is a morning game, right? This is, you're showing up hours and hours and hours before you would normally show up for a game. So I expected the Clippers to look bad. I expected James Harden to look bad. And he looked exactly like I thought he would in the, in the first few quarters, the first two and a half quarters. And I thought, look, the Celtics were playing at a great pace. They, they put up 103 shots. They got up a ton of shots. They took 20, 22 more shots than the Clippers. That's exactly what you want them to do. The pace was good, the tempo was good. They were starting to run them out of the gym. That's exactly perfect. Chef's kiss until third quarter desperation for the Clippers. The game is getting out of hand and you just start following them and you put them in the bonus early and next thing you know they get to stand still and score points and then they get back and set their defense and the Celtics have to go up against the set defense instead of running and, and getting layups and getting on, you know, cross matched and getting, you know, finding the, the, the mismatch and attacking that and getting to the rim. All of a sudden the, the game slows way down and now the Celtics and the Clippers are both last in pace. But the Celtics are middle of the pack in transition frequency. According to synergy, the Clippers are last in frequency. The Clippers are truly a slow team. They are truly not a transition team where the Celtics do tend to get out into transition, but they're not, they're just not like Miami or, you know, Chicago. They're not the teams that just go out and fly around all the time. The Celtics are kind of in between. But this was a great opportunity to run, run and they were doing that Once the Clippers got a chance to stand still and shoot 12 free throws, you make 11. You scored 11 of 36 points from the free throw line. So it doesn't exactly work the way I'm about to say it, but a normal good quarter, you give up 25 points. That's, that's great. You have 11 free throws. There's your 36 right there. It's not exactly how this works, but it's kind of indicative. You give them an opportunity. Well, you're up 24. They cut it down to five. You're not boxing out. You give them a bunch of second chance points. You're not crashing, you're not getting the offensive rebounds. All of a sudden that lead, poof, it goes away. And then the credit for the Celtics is in the fourth quarter. That all kind of stabilized the Celtics in the fourth quarter. They, they won the free throw battle by one point. They won the second chance battle by 10. They had two. No, they had, they lost the, the one in the third quarter by 10, but then they had seven to the Clippers too. So they won that by five in the fourth quarter. So you win the second chances, you force the turnovers, you match them at the free throw line. And a couple of those are intentional files at the end. There's no doubt about that. But that you build a lead so you can get that and play the foul game. So the Celtics kind of steadied themselves. And this is why I kind of, I like the win in this one maybe a lot more. I'm not going to sit here and bemoan the loss of a 24 point lead. Maybe like I might have in the past. This one. Yeah, absolutely. You cannot do what they did in the third quarter. That is something you need to fix. The files. It's, it's small little things, right? You, you clean up 3, 4, 5 shooting fouls. All of a sudden the free throw disparity goes from 28. They were 28 of 30. If you clean up three shooting fouls at six, that's six free throws that they don't make. So it's 22 of 24. Well, that's a little bit more tolerable, right? That's six points that you shave off. Well, now it's a three point win. Now. Now you're, you're up nine. If you give, if you clean up a couple of rebounds, just a couple in that, in that third quarter, instead of 12 second chance points, you give up eight. Eight. So now that's four points. Now it's a 13 point game. It's a more comfortable win that that's a game that you win much more easily and you probably get a little garbage time at the end. So they absolutely have to clean that up. There's no doubt about that. But turning around in the fourth quarter, they were up five going into the fourth. They lost it by two. So basically playing it even, you factor in that James Harden went absolutely nuts in that fourth quarter. The three shots that he hit, just insane. They just boom, boom, boom. Like the one that he missed, that was, that was crazy. You know what, I'm going to come back. I'm talk about that last shot and why there were three things wrong and two of them before we even get to whether they should have fouled the Vita Zubach because the Celtics need to be more aware of that was a perfect play by the Clippers. Perfect play. But before I get to Pritchard and White and them finding their shots, I got to talk about that last play and how the Celtics really screwed that up in a few different ways. That is coming up next. Today's show is brought to you by Robin Hood. Your ambition just met its match with Robin Hood. You play for the win not just in, not just on game day, but every day. Locking in on every opening, beating your pr, then beating it again. Channel that drive into your money. Robinhood puts you in control of your money. Trade stocks and ETFs, options, futures and crypto all on one platform. You can now build and execute your own trades from a desktop with Robinhood Legends advanced tools or take advantage of new Robinhood strategies. 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It's home to this podcast, the Lockdown Celtics podcast, which should be your first listen. Lockdown NBA game night should be your second listen. It covers every game seven days a week in the NBA. On that same feed as the Lockdown NBA podcast in the afternoons, debate show style covering all the big stories in the league, all making this the number one sports podcast network around. So on that last play, excellent execution by the Clippers. Just purely, they knew exactly what they were going to do. They set it up. Chris Dunn makes a perfect pass to Vita Zubac. Touchdown pass to the free throw line, the opposite free throw line. Zubot takes it, tips it over to harden. Harden in that left spot, that same exact spot where he had just hit two three pointers. He hit one with nine seconds left, hit one with three seconds left and then he hit one. He, he took that one with one. One basically one second left. Perfect play. He misses. So number one, the Celtics were talking about should we might have wanted to foul Zubac there. But I think number one is why weren't you guarding the inbound pass? Chris Dunn, there's no timeouts. He has to make a full court pass. Why isn't somebody in his face making it difficult for him to see, making it difficult for that angle, making him have to throw it a little higher, the angle, make the angle a little bit different, put a little more air underneath it so somebody on the other end, one of your defenders can maybe get around and get underneath it and tip the pass. So number one, have somebody on the ball. Number two, what were Derrick White and. Well, is mostly Derrick White, but Sam Houser was there too. He was, he was kind of guarding somebody else. But what was anybody doing behind Zubac? Being behind Zubot makes no sense. You're up three Zubacs. The worst thing that could happen is Zubotz catches one over the shoulder and dunks it and you have 0.8 seconds left with no timeouts. All you do is you run the same thing down the other end. Just throw a touchdown pass down the other end that just gets tipped. Just somebody get a hand on it. Just don't throw it out of bounds. There's impossible, it's impossible for the Clippers to score twice in 1.6 seconds. So why was anybody behind Zubac? So just, that was not great either. And then, okay, so then you get to the point three where, okay, Zubac has it there. Do you foul Zubac? I guess, yes. Because Harden was making those shots and you didn't want to give him the opportunity. And you put Zubotz at the line, maybe he misses the first one. I, I don't even like that. I mean, it certainly makes sense. And yes, yes, you probably should do it. But also, I'm not thrilled with the idea of the Celtics having to box out and prevent a tip in like what's what, you know, pick your poison. What's worse, James Harden with a three pointer in, in that situation or Zubac hitting a free throw and then intentionally missing, and with the way that the Celtics rebound, you don't think that somebody's going to tip that in? I don't have any confidence in the Celtics getting that rebound. So I kind of was, hey, if Harden makes it, he makes it, and he didn't. But before we even get to them fouling Zubac, I thought they, they, that was poorly defended final second. But hey, listen, that's something where now you watch this in film, you say, okay, if we're in that situation again, up three, last second, they don't have any timeouts. Just guard. Who cares if you get it? Get it over your head for two. It's, it's, it's not going to be a full court. It's gonna be a 90 foot alley oop. So I mean, unless you don't do that against Denver with, you know, Jokic throwing the pass, maybe, but like Jokic could throw a full court alley oop to Aaron Gordon. Like that play I would actually believe happened, but outside of that, I don't think it would happen anyway. Okay. So I'm spending a lot of time on that. It doesn't matter. They. It didn't, it didn't go in gotta. Peyton Pritchard, he was 8 of 13. He was actually 8 of 10 at one point and then he missed a few, obviously, but he, he brought his field goal percentage, 3 point field goal percentage up 4 full points with this. So water is going to find its level. I thought Pritchard and Derrick White combined. White was four of eight. White hit a huge one in the fourth quarter. So I think we're, we're probably turning a corner when it comes to their shooting. So that was really good to see. That was never a major concern, but you hear these guys talk. Pritchard has talked about like, I was in a mental funk. And then today after the game, he talked about I, you know, was really tinkering with my form and, and really overthinking. And he admitted, like, I'm an overthinker when it comes to this stuff and might have, might have gone too far with it. And now he's just saying, hey, I'm gonna let it fly. So that's good. This is exactly where you need to be. This is great to see. Pritchard. Like, don't overdo it. Don't overthink it. Don't, you know, I understand the need to like, perfect and you know, these guys at this level think about things in such a granular way that is beyond, well beyond my comprehension. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on the game of basketball, but these guys are just, you know, as I've, I've said, like, I see myself as a, you know, like a high school science teacher when it comes to basketball. Like, I know a few things and I can teach a few things. These guys are astrophysicists. These guys understand things that when it comes to basketball at a level that I'm like, wait, hold on. You. What you, you think about it this way. And so, yeah, I can understand why these guys might. Oh, you know, it's, it's coming off my finger this way. And if I do this and if I do that and you know, my, if they do all that stuff, like, I can understand you wanting to get to a point where you've refined it to. But sometimes you can sand something too much and you've gone too far now. You've created an imperfection by trying to be too perfect. So I'm, I'm very happy to hear Prichard say that. I'm just letting it fly. Trust in the work he's. And that's great. And I think Derek might be in a similar boat, not necessarily with the tinkering, but with the overthinking or getting in his head. I think now he's. He's got that confidence back that's flowing, feels good. He looks good. So this. This was very much like a classic. Like, we're getting classic Derrick White back, which is Good. He was 7 of 17, 4 of 8 from 3, 22 points, 9 assists, 7 rebounds. So, you know, flirting with a triple double. Once you get to the Sevens in these categories, you can start saying flirting with a triple double. So that. That's where he was. Pritchard had 30. He and Jalen Brown had, you know, combined for 63 points. Jalen Brown, 33 points, 13 rebounds. He had seven rebounds in the fourth quarter, 13 points in the fourth quarter. That's another thing about that fourth quarter where the Celtics shored things up. They. Even though Harden did all his damage, like, towards the end, Jalen did his damage earlier. He had 13 points in the fourth quarter to kind of counter what. What Harden did. So it was just really good to see the Celtics kind of level off in that fourth quarter. And you make shots, you. You prevent them from. From coming all the way back. You execute the Peyton Pritchard to Jalen Brown dunk with. Was it 15 seconds to go or so the. The press break. That was. That's something you haven't seen executed, right. The Celtics broke a press. They didn't, you know, they didn't screw it up. They didn't turn it over. They broke the press. They got a dunk and got it to five. That was important. They made their free throws. Four free throws down the stretch. Shout out to Jordan Walsh. You. You zoom out a little bit more. He had two clutch free throws. So that was. They executed down the stretch. They executed when it mattered most. And so great, great performance there. I'll talk about Jordan Walsh and I'll talk about why this is a bigger deal because of all of this stuff that is coming up next. And Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug Limu. Is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@liberty mutual.com. liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty Savings. Very underwritten by Liberty Mutual insurance Company Affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts. Today's show is brought to you by FanDuel. NBA is back, baby. No better place to get in on the action than FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. Even if you missed the start of the game, you can sit there and get in on the action. You want to ride the hot hand. That would have been a heck of a hot hand to ride in this game with James Harden. Fanduel has live bets on everything from who will score next to fourth quarter comebacks. Plus you can combine your live bets into a same game parlay for a shot at a bigger payout. Keeps every game exciting, especially when your team is making a late push. Right now, FanDuel is giving you, a new customer, $300 in bonus bets when your first $5 bet win. So make it a good one. You bet five bucks, you get 300 in bonus bets when you win. @fanduel.com make sure when you're signing up, you use the, the, the tools that they offer you to set a limit, set a budget, whatever you can afford to lose. That's what you should be setting as the budget. Don't worry about it. If you hit a cold streak, they'll protect you. You can gamble responsibly@fanduel.com the official sports betting partner of the NBA. Thanks for making Lockdown Celtics your first listen. Every day, go check out lockdown fantasy basketball. Josh Lloyd has got you covered everything, every move that you want to make on lockdown fantasy basketball. He's got you whatever you want to do, add, drop, trade, he, he's got it. It's the number one fantasy basketball show on the number one sports podcasting network in the world. Shout out to Jordan Walsh, who continues to play great defense. Now you say, well, he was guarding James Harden. Harden scored 37. Well, he wasn't the only one guarding hardened and I thought he gardened Harden very well. After the game, Ty Lue was very complimentary of Jordan Walsh. He said, I thought he did a great job just competing with James, just denying him the basketball, picking him up full court, making it tough on him. He did a great job and you need guys like that on your team. So that's, you know, very nice thing to hear from the, you know, head coach of the other team. Walsh, not perfect, but he's, he's finding a way to use those long arms of his to get in there, poke the ball free with him. And Minot, you have two guys of similar ability, similar capabilities and they, you know, you can, you can put those guys on the other team's best player. It doesn't have to be Jalen Brown. And I know Jalen, like, likes to be that guy, but he doesn't have to be that guy. You can, you can take some of the pressure off of him. And I appreciate that Jalen wants to do that. But right now with this team, Jalen's working extraordinarily hard to score. He's working very hard to score the ball, put him on somebody else like they did in this game and let Jordan Walsh do the heavy lifting. Jalen will switch. He'll get his times on Harden. He's not going to shy away from those, those assignments, but take advantage of the guys you have. Don't waste Jordan Walsh's defensive ability on somebody else just because Jalen wants this assignment. Like, I appreciate that very, very much, but doesn't have to be that way. So I liked that he got the, the assignment on Harden. I like that he did very well for most of the game. He did well. Now, again, couple of the foul calls were questionable at best. And because the Celtics were able to win, I can highlight those and not sound like I'm making an excuse. There were a couple where it's like, James Harden definitely changed his, Changed his path. He wasn't going to the basket. He changed his path to create the contact with Walsh bounced off of him unnaturally and still got the foul call. I don't know how he's getting those, but that was. Those. Those were bad calls. And you know, hopefully, hopefully the league reviews those with, with these refs. But that's, That's a, that's the type of play that they're trying to legislate out of the, out of the game. You don't want these. You don't want a player to influence the game by manipulating it. And I think the cell, the. The NBA has kind of established that in recent years. And this was kind of back to old school Harden kind of grifting his way towards free throws. But whatever, it's Jordan Walsh. Hey, at least maybe when you go back and look at this now Jordan Walsh, maybe the refs can go back and say, actually that was pretty good defense. We got to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, you know, and maybe you just got to earn your stripes. But that was. I thought his defense was good. And so now the Celtics win this game. And this matters. These games, these types of wins matter. And this is a bigger deal to me, me, because how they did it, because they didn't lose, because they went through the, the things that they went through in the third quarter, they didn't carry it over into the fourth. They found a way to win. They found a way to put themselves in position where, hey, if Harden had hit that shot, it wasn't a game winner. It wasn't like the Kelly Oubrey put that against the Sixers. If he had hit that shot, they would have gone into overtime. And while it feels like, oh, if he hit that shot, they would have lost, it's not the case. And who knows, who knows what would have happened in overtime. Any, any outcome is likely. The Celtics could have lost in overtime, but also the Clippers could have run out of gas. We've seen that happen millions of times in the NBA or thousands of times in the NBA where a team makes a frantic run, they tie the game, send it to overtime and then get waxed on a 12, 2 run and the know the other team wins by 10, which very easily could have happened in this game because again, I, I don't, I think they, they, you know, Harden made that frantic kind of final push. I don't think that the, the rest of the Clippers were, you know, ready to, to go another five minutes. So, but regardless, putting that, that nine minute stretch aside for them and moving forward in the fourth, Jalen coming through now, it wasn't Jalen's most efficient night. 33 points on 33 field goal attempts is a very 90s superstar type of thing to do. That was, it's not an efficient night. He was 1 of 7 from 3, but 13 points in the fourth quarter. Finding the seven rebounds in the fourth quarter, that's called finding away. And so I think, I think I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. He missed some free, some layups in the third quarter especially. That's bad. Missed layups are damaging. I don't know who needs to hear this, but just getting to the rim isn't like, oh well, hey, they got to the rim, they missed the layup, but he got to the rim. That's, no, that's not how this works. Missing a layup is insanely damaging to an NBA team, to a basketball team. You miss a layup, that guy is behind the play. All of a sudden the other team gets, it's an inherent five on four advantage. You're immediately, because the momentum is taking you out of bounds. The guy who lays it in is the last guy back. And either he thinks he got fouled and he's turning to a ref, or maybe he fell or maybe he's just mad at himself. He's behind the play. Those plays always seem to turn into something, at least an opportunity for the other team. And so, yes, Jalen had. And he was down on himself after the game. He had some missed layups, the Celtics missed some layups. And you can't have that. You have to clean that up. But Jalen missed those layups in the third quarter, but found a way in the fourth. The Celtics found a way to execute in the fourth. You know, like I said, Jordan Walsh hitting those free throws. Jordan, Derek, Peyton, all hitting free throws, executing that fast break to get that dunk to make it. So the worst thing that could have happened was a tie game, right? Whereas the past, like this season, the Celtics put themselves in position to lose those games. And so this is an important. When the results matter, like I said after the last game, the results matter. And this is a result that matters to me because they found a way to do it and found a little bit more poise, just a little bit more poise than they had the last time. Incremental progress. And now here the Celtics are at 7 and 7. The Celtics started the season 0 and 3, so they're 7 and 4 in their last 11 games. That's really good. 7 and 4. That's great. It's a 60 something win percentage at 7 and 7. The Celtics need to win like 55 of their games. And, and they get to that 44, 45 wins that I think has been on the high end of most people's predictions. And if you, obviously the more you win, the, you know, you get 46, 47. It's. It's all still within reach. Very reasonable results are within reach. So this is an important win. Figuring out how to win a game like this, forget that the opponent was in a bad spot for sure. I get it. You need to win this now. You got Brooklyn twice. This is a, this is an important stretch. Brooklyn twice at Brooklyn Tuesday, Brooklyn at home on Friday. You win those two games, you're nine and seven now. You're looking good. Now you have yourself a little bit of leeway. You put yourself in a position now where you're stacking, you're stacking those, those positive results. I will be here after the road Brooklyn game. The home Brooklyn game on Friday. I'll have to catch up on that. I'm gonna be out of town at a wedding. So that's the one game that I haven't missed the game in forever. So. But just so you know, Friday night, do not expect, but I will be here every other game so make sure you're subscribed. The show's free. It's available Everywhere. It's on YouTube. I'd love to have you become an everyday or join me every Monday through Friday. However you want to listen to the show, or if you want to watch the show on YouTube, do that. Get into the comments section, share your thoughts with your fellow Celtics fans with me, and then share the podcast. Tell everybody they should be listening to and watching the Lockdown Celtics podcast here on the Lockdown Podcast Network your team every day. Dude, this new bacon, egg, and chicken biscuit from AM pm. Total winner. Winner, chicken breakfast. Chicken breakfast? Come on. I think you mean chicken dinner, bro. Nah, brother. Crispy bacon, fluffy eggs, juicy chicken, and a buttery biscuit. That's the perfect breakfast. All right, let me try it. Okay. 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