← Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
Boston SILENCES Critics with DOMINANT Game 3 Win | Payton Pritchard a DIFFERENCE MAKER
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Can the Boston Celtics maintain their momentum after a thrilling Game 3 victory over the New York Knicks in the NBA playoffs? With players like Payton Pritchard and Al Horford stepping up, the Celtics BACK in the series. John Karalis of Boston Sports Journal breaks down the Celtics' return to form, highlighting Joe Mazzulla's unique coaching philosophy and the impact of key players. Discover how Pritchard's energy and Horford's veteran presence are reshaping the team's strategy. The episode also explores Kristaps Porzingis' role and the Celtics' path forward as they prepare for Game 4. Don't miss this in-depth analysis of the Boston Celtics' playoff journey and the strategies that could lead them to success. Tune in for exclusive insights and expert commentary.
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Foreign podcast network your team every day. This is Jake from Lock Dawn. When the game's on the line, the best know when to pass. Because the right assist can change everything. And off the court, it's no different. That's where your State Farm agent comes in. Whether it's protecting your car, your home, or helping you prep for the unexpected, they'll help set you up with a game plan that works for for you. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability and eligibility vary by state. This is Tyler Roland from the Locked on Titans podcast. This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. I love how simple it is to pay using Apple Card With Apple Pay it's built right into my iPhone so it's always ready to go. I was on vacation recently. I didn't even have to bring my wallet to the beach, but plus I earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase when I use my Apple Card. With Apple Pay. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at applecard.com Joe Missoula wanted the Boston Celtics to tap into their darkness. What they tapped into was some made shots and and a win in game three. It's right now on the Lockdown Celtics podcast. Uhhuh. Yup yup. Be sound, be ever ready. Recognize the city of champs back to back. If I say the stamp locked on number 19. The best one, the next one juice loose in your pool now for the next run. It's the seas. Who else could it be? What they going to say now? Screaming like JT Corralis Recap the madness every game, every practice best daily pod no like Brad Beckett clutch like Drew the KP tap in daily prime time. Depp and Z White on the sideline. Ren and Chase how it started raising Ben. That's how we finish. Locked on Celtics pod home of the winners. Hey there. Welcome back to the Lockdown Celtics podcast right here on the Lockdown podcast network where it is your team every day, Monday through Friday. Bonus podcast like this one on a Saturday night from New York City, not from Madison Square Garden because Madison Square Garden is weird. They kick you out. It's the only arena that I've been in. They kick you out a couple of a couple of hours after the game so I couldn't be on the court. Had my writing to do for Boston Sports Journal. So now I'm back in my hotel room here in New York City. Giving you this podcast. I'm John Corrales, beat writer for Boston Sports Journal. I've been covering the Boston Celtics for about 20 years. I've written a couple of books about them. So I have a little bit of a depth of knowledge here for you. If you're a new listener, hopefully you subscribe. You enjoyed this show, which today is about a Boston Celtics win, 115 to 93. They led by more than 30 at one point. They got the lead to over 20 early in the game, early in the second quarter, and that was enough to just carry it through. The Celtics got a lot from Peyton Pritchard. I'll talk about him in a few minutes. They. The tap into their darkness is a Joe Missoula. Just another Joe Missoula classic quote. And. But let's just start with this. They. They look more like themselves for the first time this series. They really did look like themselves. I didn't think they played particularly well in game one, and then they collapsed. I think game two was still something to be desired, and they collapsed. And game three, they actually started to look like themselves. They were, first of all hitting shots. This is number one. They. They hit shots. And it can be as simple as that. Now, Joe, when I asked him about that after the game, kind of pushed back on it and said, we didn't turn the ball over. We, you know, we did other things. You know, he won the margins. So it's not just as simple as we hit shots, but you hit 20 of 43 pointers. Hitting 23 pointers is a great start for if the Celtics are going to win. Hitting 23 pointers is a great place for them to begin a winning game. So that, that is the number one thing. The number one thing from the Celtics is they got back to looking at like themselves. They played some pretty good defense. They hit a good amount of their shots. Now, 50 is a little bit of a correction. Water finding its level, so to speak, but it's still open. Shots fell. And part of why they played good defense is because the shots fell. And part of why the shots fell was because they got. But they were playing good defense. Everything kind of flows in that same kind of circle. So it was. It was good to see the Celtics getting that, just looking. Looking like the Celtics building a lead, keeping the lead, adding to it, preventing runs. All of that stuff was. Was huge in this game. Now they is. It's another kind of part of this pattern for the Celtics where they lost two games at home, questionable losses, tough losses, and then they Go on the road, and they dominate. Remember back to January, December, January, that little stretch of Celtics losing at home, and you're like, why are they losing these games at home? They don't look good. And, you know, we excused a lot of it away. And then they go on the road, and it's like, wow, okay, that's the Boston Celtics. And it's kind of wild that this pattern is coming back now. I think it does show some of the value of the regular season. And even though the Celtics were able to flip a switch, they're not always. You know, it's not always that easy. And when you put a little bit of pressure on them, does, you know, you revert back to some of your base instincts in this season? Some of their base instincts was, you know, to perform on the road. And. And they. They got a little too comfortable at home. For whatever reason, they get a little too comfortable at home. They can't do that anymore. They. They don't have that margin for error anymore. But they come out here on the road and. And they quote, tap into your darkness. That's Joe Missoula. He said, it got dark there for a little while, but in a good way. Joe Missoula loves a challenge. If there's nothing else about Joe Missoula that you should know, it's that he doesn't want things to be easy. He said, I didn't get into this for it to be easy. He does not want what you want. What I want, which is easy wins, no questions asked, Celtics dominate, be done with it, end of story. He. He really doesn't want that. He wants a challenge. He wants to see what his guys are made of. He's always testing himself to see what he's made of, and he wants his guys to do the same. He's testing other people. He's constantly testing, testing, testing. That's. That's Joe Missoula's M.O. and so he wants to win every game. He wants it to be hard. He wants them to figure things out. He wants everything to be a little bit difficult. And what do you have? What are you made of? And so, yeah, it got dark. But he said, I want them to tap into your darkness. You have to. And I think what that means is when you tap into your darkness, I don't think he's. He means, like, tap into your dark side like you're Darth Vader or anything like that, but more tap into, like, okay, what is it that makes you uncomfortable? What is this situation that we're in that Makes it uncomfortable. Why are we here and how do we get out of it? That's, I think, what he's looking for. And the Celtics had that. They were down.02, and they went to MSG and they got together. They, you know, Peyton Pritchard, after the game, talk about shutting off social media, turning all that stuff off. Like, stop paying attention to what's being said about you out on the outside and just go in there and play. And it looked like they did that. Now it's only one game, right? And so it's not. It's not anything to like. You're not celebrating, but you're happy that they won this one game. So now you got to go and win the next game. I think the pressure is on New York at this point. The Knicks. There might be people who argue there's no pressure on New York because they're not expected to win. But once you go up to O now, all of a sudden, the expectations are. People have been declaring the Celtics dead for the past two days. You know, I'm not even going to get into specific people and all that stuff, but the Celtics have been declared dead for a while. People have been dancing on a hastily dug grave real quick. It doesn't mean that they are dead, but the Knicks, I think, have the pressure to put the Celtics out, to put them away. You won the first two games. Now you have five chances to win two games. You should be able to do it if you're the Knicks. But the Celtics are very capable of winning four in a row. Four of five. As Jalen Brown said after the game, so you got to beat us four times. Not two, not one, not three. You got to beat us four times. And that. That is a level of confidence and I think a little bit of maturity of understanding how long this series really is, how much basketball there is left to be played. The Knicks still have to beat the Celtics two more times, and that's hard to do. Teams don't beat the Celtics that often. So the pressure is on New York. You're at home. Win a freaking home game. But the home. Home teams are. I'm recording this as the Golden State Minnesota game is going on. So as of right now, the home teams are 3 and 8 in the playoffs. And it looks like. I'm checking the score. Looks like Minnesota is going to win. So that would make it 3 and 9. Home teams are 3 and 9 in the second round of the playoffs. It's a weird case in Golden State. Steph's out and all that but still, bottom line is three and nine. The home teams are three and nine in the second round. That's wild. So the Knicks want it to be 4 and 9. The Celtics want it to be 3 and 10. The next time they, they play or whatever, the number is going to be back by the time they play again. The pressure I think is on New York. The pressure is on them to win that game and put themselves in a position to upset the Celtics and take that series. I think there is also pressure on the Celtics to like not lose to the Knicks. But I think I, I do think that the, the pressure has shifted to New York. So I'll get into the key moment. The, the, my, my number one moment of this game that told me, okay, this game is different. That's coming up next. Today's show is brought to you by DoorDash. Open up that DoorDash app because they have a new thing called they Swoosh. You score during the playoffs. If any player drops 50 or more in a playoff game, Dash Pass members score three piece Crispy Tenders combo from Wingstop the next day. 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It's this great device that's also in Xbox. You can turn any tv. I'm here in my hotel room. I can plug it into this TV behind me if I want to fire up some Xbox. It has EA Play included. Fire Stick, Fire TV Stick. 4K devices are your gaming and entertainment hub. No console requirements. All you got to do is have a paired controller. You get all sorts of EA Sports games, all sorts of Xbox games. So it's endless Entertainment. You got 4K streaming with more than 1.5 million movies and TV episodes from your favorite subscribed services like Netflix Prime Video, Disney plus Max and more. Listen, summer is coming up so you're going to be traveling with the family. This Fire TV Stick 4K plugs into any one of these hotel room, Airbnb, whatever, TVs when the kids are around, you get the paired controller. They play the video games, they stay occupied, they're happy when they go to sleep. You use this because you don't know what channels are going to be on the hotel tv. You can use it to stream a bunch of stuff. It's a no brainer to me. So head on over to Amazon.com firetv locked on to get started. Xbox game pass ultimate subscription and compatible controller is required. Amazon.com Fire TV locked on available on select devices including Fire TV Stick 4K second generation Fire TV Stick 4K max first and second generation and Fire TV Cube third generation. Thank you for making Lockdown Celtics your first listen every day. Go check out Lockdown NBA game night. They've got the playoffs covered seven nights a week on there on Friday nights with Jake Madison. So all the playoffs covered. Deep dives into all the games. So go check that out. All right, the one moment, the one stretch where I said this is where the Celtics have this, have this game wrapped and I felt finally a little bit of confidence in, in them holding the lead was the 255 left in the first half. The Celtics, Jalen Brunson hits a three and the Knicks cut it to 17. Now it sounds familiar, right? Like the Celtics were up 20, Brunson hits a three, they cut it to 17. There's less than three minutes to go. This is about the time we were like, okay, here we go, here it is. And I, I think I even said it out loud on press row like, okay, here it is, here we go. Time to buckle up. And what the Celtics did was they went on their own 146 run and went into halftime up 25. And to me that's as much as a turning point as the Celtics in the middle of the second quarter going on a 90 run to turn the 13 point lead into 22. Now that point, that 13 lead, 13 point lead going to 22 changes the dynamic of the game because it never really got down below anything serious. But that end of second quarter stretch when the Celtics went in, I, I turn, I'm sitting next to Suichi Terada from Mass Live. And we're talking about. The Celtics do not end quarters well in this series. They're not finishing quarters strong in this series. This is it. If they. If they botch it here, we're in for another one. And if they don't, then this looks good, and they didn't. So to credit to them, that was a very, very important stretch that prevented a run that really kind of shut down New York's hopes. That crowd was electric. That atmosphere was electric. Madison Square Garden is one of those buildings just like TD Garden. But there's something to it. The way it's constructed, the way. I don't know. It's. It's an older building. The acoustics, something, whatever. I don't know what it is. But the lighting, maybe because it's lit a little bit differently. It's like stage lighting. That place was rocking, and the crowd was into it, you know, during the. During the anthem, you could always tell when a crowd is really, really into it. During the anthem, they're, like, hooting and hollering and they're singing along, and, like, they're. When they're that into the anthem, you know, they're ready to. To go. And the Celtics immediately kind of stomped that out. By the third quarter, they were doing the fake jumbotron, you know, get loud stuff, and no one was. No one was reacting. No one was getting loud. They weren't even reacting to the fake noise meter or all that stuff. So Celix did a great job of taking the life out of that building right away. That's. And that's what you love to do on the road. Nothing better than walking into that kind of atmosphere and then listening. Where'd you go? Yo, you're so. You're all pretty quiet now, so great job there. Heading into the half the way they did. Did a great. Really took the life out of that building. Payton Pritchard was a huge part of this. The Celtics made timely plays, got timely stops, and Pritchard was kind of in the middle of a lot of it. Pritchard played 34 minutes after playing something like 24 and 22 in the first two games. Now, Joe said it was about Drew Holiday being in foul trouble, and that's why he got a lot of. A lot of run. Pritchard checked in in the first quarter and didn't sit out until, you know, didn't even sit for the rest of the half, and. And ended up playing 34 and a half minutes, which is more than anybody except for Tatum and Brown. So he. He really got the call here. 8 of 16 shooting, 5 of 10 from 3:23 points to lead the Celtics. I thought he was incredible. And it does. It does raise the question of, like, should he be playing more? And I was having that conversation before the game with people, and, you know, it's an interesting. It's an interesting question because he has been targeted. And Brunson especially is like, hey, I got another small guy on me. You don't need a pick to free Brunson up when he's playing against Peyton Pritchard. You don't need to get a switch. It's. Brunson can just go try to cook and you know that you don't want to just give the other team that kind of advantage. But Pritchard, to his credit, has been really, you know, impressive. Defensively, he's held his own. There are a couple of plays where Brunson got him because Jalen, he's. Jalen Brunson, he's going to get everybody. But more, you know, more often than not. Pritchard was on the. On the positive side of things for the Celtics. And I thought, you know, I, I think he's. He's the type of guy whose ball pressure defensively can disrupt what the Knicks are trying to do, slow them down, but also on the other side, he can play a faster tempo in the half court and get the Celtics into their sets a little bit faster. It was no surprise that Pritchard's, you know, when Pritchard stopped handling the ball and handed it off to Jason Tatum, that the. Everything slowed down with the ball in Tatum's hands. Now Tatum shot well. He. He was. He would hit four of his first, he was four for four from three, and then one of his next five. So five of nine. But he. He definitely is a slower player. Pritchard, when you need to play a little bit faster, putting the ball in his hands and asking him to make. Make not just plays, but reads and. And be the. The point guard that I, I like that. I like how that looked against the Knicks. It just forces the Knicks to react to somebody that's willing to just dribble, dribble, dribble, dribble, and like, get through and be shifty and get into the teeth of things and just be disruptive on both ends of the floor, but offensively, force some help, force the Knicks to be like, oh, God, we go. We got to account for this guy. So that's an important element here. I thought Pritchard did a great job of that. So I think he, I think in Game four, you might see a little bit more, a little bit more Pritchard. And he's, he is the energy guy. It's almost like he's going back to his old role with better ability. I, I think, I think his speed and his tempo really are important against the Knicks because the Celtics, when they, the Celtics play slow, I think that plays into New York's hands. So more, I think more Payne Pritchard is, is probably one of the answers. Al Horford played great. I thought he was really good. That block shot at the end on Mitchell Robinson was incredible. And if you watch the mic'd up, you know, Jalen Brown screaming, I got five kids. I have five kids. Like, I'm sure that means, you know, Al Horford had said that to somebody in the locker room. That, that has become a thing. It's like the third time it's been mentioned by Jaylen Brown, especially, you know, that at some point, somewhere in the locker room, Al Horford said something to somebody was like, hey man, I got five kids and I'm doing this right. You can, I can see him saying that. And that's something that Jaylen Brown has latched on to. I think it's hilarious. But yeah, I thought, I thought Horford was really good. Porzingis, I gotta address the Porzingis. He showed me something. I don't know what. He showed me something. He was over three, so he didn't, he wasn't great. He wasn't good offensively necessarily, but he got to the line six times, which is important. He had a couple of assists. One of them to Luke Cornett was great. Three block shots, very good. Also important, he, he wasn't a negative. He wasn't that big a positive. But an under discussed element here is that the Celtics got Porzingis, especially for these moments, those game one, game two, fourth quarter collapses. That's why the Celtics got Porzingis. When the Celtics were playing like that against Miami in 2023, Brad Stevens reacted by getting Porzingis and being like, that's the guy. That's our matchup guy. So with him not there and him not taking advantage of the matchups, that hurts the Celtics ability to stabilize when things are going awry. Now, he did a little bit of that, a little bit of that. So I don't want to say that he, him being back and playing in this game and playing, what was it, 19 minutes, I don't want to say that that did a big. Made a huge difference, but it wasn't a negative and so that's a positive. If he can come back, if he's feeling better, then great, then hopefully he can be more of a factor. Derrick White was really good hitting shots. He had some tough ones so that was good. I thought Luke Cornett gave them some good minutes. Jason and Jalen, you know, again not shooting great overall. Jason missed a bunch of layups especially early. Gotta be stronger there. Jalen with the knee I think is still being bothered. But look, Jason, 22 points, nine rebounds, seven assists, two steals. Jalen 19.6 rebounds, five assists, a steal, a block. You know, only five combined turnovers for them. So some, some shaky moments but you know, in some not so great. Like I think I do think the fourth quarter slowed down a little too much. But overall I'm not going to complain too much about what was somewhere between a 20 and a 30 point game for most of most of the final three quarters. So now let's just look. You got to do it again. This is great. You two 1. It's weird that all three 60 win teams are down two 1 in their semifinal series. That's weird. But that's where they are. Come back Monday night and do it again. Do it again. Tie this thing up, send this back to Boston best of three and then just win. Just win at home and finish it off. That's Celtics very easily finish this off. They're very capable of winning three more in a row, but they're also very capable of making this difficult. So. Or more difficult. It's already difficult. I'll be here. I'll have a podcast tomorrow. From here we'll re watch the game, get deeper into it. Look ahead to that Game four here in New York. So make sure you're subscribed over to your podcast. Watch the show on YouTube, get into the comments section. I would suspect fewer Knicks fans will be here this time, but I'm sure plenty of you are here. So hello Knicks fans. If you're a Celtics fan, you got to get into that comment section and brace yourself for the fight. I would appreciate it if you do that. And then I would appreciate it if you shared the podcast and told everybody they should be listening to and watching the Lockdown Celtics podcast here on the Lockdown Podcast Network. It's your team every day. You showed up for a quick nine that turned into 18. Blame the pure drives, birdie putts and the transfusion five hour energy shots. Inspired by golf's unofficial cocktail known as the Transfusion, this product brings the iconic combination of grape, lime and ginger flavors to a non alcoholic Transfusion five Hour Energy Shot made with the classic five Hour Energy zero Sugar blend of B vitamins, nutrients and caffeine. Stay clutch on the course and bring the party to the clubhouse. Afterward, Amp up your next round with a transfusion 5 hour energy shot available now at 5hourenergy.com. 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