← Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
Celtics, Jaylen Brown, JUST MISS stealing slug-fest against Detroit Pistons
00:26:54
Boston Celtics fall to the Detroit Pistons in a bruising 104-103 showdown as Jaylen Brown’s last-second fadeaway comes up short. Could a potential seven-game playoff battle between these Eastern Conference contenders be on the horizon? Questions arise over Brown’s heavy legs after guarding Cade Cunningham and missing crucial free throws, spotlighting tactical choices and postseason readiness. John Karalis of SI breaks down Boston’s struggle with turnovers, foul trouble, and Derrick White’s surprising shooting slump, while praising the Pistons’ rim-protecting defense and Cade Cunningham’s impact. Analytical insights address the lack of offensive flow, missed opportunities for Sam Hauser and Payton Pritchard, and how physical play defined this matchup. Can the Celtics translate this intensity into a much-needed bounce-back against the Pacers or will issues linger deeper into the season?
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- [00:00]
John Karalis
Foreign.
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- [01:12]
John Karalis
Jalen Brown had a chance to win this thing. The Celtics had plenty of chances to make this a different result. But if we get seven games of this in May, I'd be happy with it. We'll talk about it right now on the Locked On Celtics Podcast. Hey there. Welcome back to the Lockdown Celtics Podcast right here on the Lockdown Podcast network. Where does your team every day? Your team is the Boston Celtics and I talk about them every Monday through Friday plus bonus podcasts when they play on weekends. Plenty of weekend games this month, so make sure you're subscribed. Wherever you get your podcast, watch the show on YouTube. If you're watching on YouTube, you'll see that I'm here at Little Caesars arena and what's left of the floor behind me. So I'm sitting up here after the Celtics lost to the Detroit Pistons. So I hope you're enjoying enjoy the view, enjoy the the sounds, the sights and sounds of the bull gang over here ripping up the floor. If you're new to the show, I'm John Corralis. I'm a beat writer for Sports Illustrated. Celtics on si. I have been do. I've been doing a version of the job for 20 years. I'm all choked up. I've been doing this podcast for 10 and I've written a couple books about the team. All right, let's just dive into this thing because the Celtics had their chances in a 104, 103 loss. Later on, we'll talk about the turnovers, the foul trouble, Jalen Brown's inefficient night, which didn't really help much. We'll get into individual performances throughout this game. The. There's no real flow. I think one of the things from this game is that the flow of the game was really terrible because it was a tough, physical game. This was a typical kind of old school Celtics pistons just knock down, drag out physical battle, which personally I love. I love physical basketball. I think this is, it's kind of like a little bit of the best of both worlds. You see some guys shake free for opportunities to score and get shots. You see some guys kind of not be able to find a rhythm, find a flow, and it really is like one of those, hey, you know, if you're a really good team, if you're, if you're really one of the best teams out there, you find a way to win this game. And look, the Celtics, like I said, they had their chances. Jaylen Brown, the Celtics for a little bit like four and a half seconds to go. They have the ball, they get Jalen on a straight drive from the top. He takes a little sidestep, fade away, mid range jumper. We've seen him hit that shot I don't know how many times this year, over a hundred. So it's, it's not a shot that you look at and you go, oh, that wasn't a great look. It's a totally fine look. And the Celtics had five guys on the floor where in that amount of time Jalen could have made another pass if something had presented itself. But the, the pistons defended it well. Jalen got that fade away, that kind of the, the shot, like that shot is his kind of almost signature shot. And afterwards he said it felt good leaving his hands. His legs were a little bit heavy, and I think the legs were a little bit heavy because of the, the, the intensity of the game. And he was trying to guard Cade Cunningham in this game. If I have one little knock on this, my feeling is that Jalen came out, he wanted that, that Cade Cunningham matchup, which is always admirable. And you know, he, he prides himself on, hey, I want to, I want to defend the other team's best player, and I want to be the guy to, to be like the number one option. And, and that's great, man, I love that attitude. But also, this is a tough team. This is a physical team. The Celtics had, you know, other options to put on. On Cade Cunningham, the other ways to defend Cade Cunningham. I'm not so sure that in a playoff series that's how I want to go. Just, just because you have the situation like this where Jalen needs to take this last shot of the game. And he said my legs were feeling a little bit heavy. Well, maybe the legs wouldn't feel as heavy if you weren't guarding Cade for a lot of the game. And I'm not saying don't go out there and guard, you know, and be a defensive, kind of make a defensive impact. I'm not saying that. But the Celtics have options to defend the other guy's best player. You, you're going to get plenty of opportunities to guard Cade throughout the game anyway. You don't have to burn your legs on, on, you know, guarding Cade Cunningham right away. That's. There have to be choices made. When you're the number one scoring option. Be like, hey, maybe you can get him a little bit of a rest by not putting him on Cade right away. Find somebody else. Put him on Duncan Robinson and go that way. Put him on Tobias Harris. I'd rather have that. So you're not, you know, you can come over and help and all of that stuff, but just a little, a little nitpicky thing that I appreciate and maybe look, congratulations to Jalen for getting named all star starter. That was very, you know, a nice thing for him and I'm sure he would have loved to have celebrated a little bit more. He deserved to be an all star starter. I think he's going to be a first or second team all NBA player this year, depending on how the second half goes and how, you know, some guys may be, you know, not making the 65 game cutoff. So Jalen, Jalen's got plenty of accolades and him getting to be an all star starter is really nice. Part of me feels like he, you know, he's always searching for motivation. We were talking about this on press row where Cade was the guy that got the mo. He was number one in player voting and Jalen was number one in media voting. He was like third or fourth in player voting. So maybe Jalen felt like, oh, okay, I'm gonna go guard Cade and we'll see, we'll see who's number one. Like, it felt like that was like a something that was motivating him and he wanted to prove something. Jalen always wants to prove something, and it's again, impressive that he wants to do that. Stuff, but I think it could have saved his legs a little bit to, you know, for, for the end of the game. But in the end, I, I love the physicality. If this is a playoff preview, if this is how this is going to go for the Celtics, like for first of all, as the top two seeds currently, and we'll see what happens. The Knicks got just the doors blown off of them earlier in the night, so they was by, by Dallas. And so the standings, in fact, let me call up the standings real quick because there's a little bit of separation. The Knicks are in a little bit of a free fall and the, let's see here. The Celtics are still the second seed, obviously, and the Knicks are now 25 and 18, so they're a game and a half behind the Celtics. Obviously it's too early for this to matter a whole lot, but the Celtics, two games up in the loss column, if they can maintain that. And we'll see what happens with the, the, the Knicks the rest of the way. They've lost four in a row and they're, they're. I think this is just a little January thing for them. But you know, who knows? I think the Celtics and the Pistons as the top two teams, if they could meet again, which would mean the conference finals, which would be amazing. Obviously at that point I fully believe that Jason Tatum will be back. And that's another thing that happened earlier in the day that Tatum put on like a little bit of a show for the media at the team shoot around, which was about a half an hour outside of Detroit. The Celtics will have a different team that, but the, the physicality, the type, this was a playoff type atmosphere, playoff type game, some playoff type files. So I thought the Celtics, look, they could have done a lot of things better here to give themselves a chance to win. But hey, this is, this has been. They're, they're 1 and 3 against the Pistons. They could have been 3 and 1. They had a couple of opportunities to win earlier. This is obviously a one point game. You go back and you say, look, Jalen missed two free throws with two minutes to go. That obviously hurt the Celtics in a one point game. They were, they were I think something like 18 of 20 from the line coming into the fourth quarter. And they were 6 of 10 in the, in the third, in the fourth quarter. So missing four fourth quarter free throws in a game, you lose by one. Those types of things matter. The turnovers were a problem. I'll get to that in a second. But this was obviously winnable so my, my overall kind of reaction from this is not, not bothered by it. Not like losing to the Pistons. There's no kind of like, oh man, I can't believe they lost to the Pistons at the same time. God, if a few things had gone differently, this easily could have been a Celtics win. But that's, that's how this goes between these two teams. So if it is, if they do meet in the playoffs, I think people would pick obviously Detroit to win this. But that, that would be, I think that would be a great battle and that would be, that could easily be a seven game series. So I'm looking forward to that. Let's get into some of the more nitty gritty here. Jalen Brown's inefficiency, the flow of the game, which was terrible, and all of that stuff. We'll do that when I come back. Today's show is brought to you by Quo. It's a new year and there are new systems. And this is the time that a time of year where a lot of us look at the messier parts of how you run your business and think there has to be a better way. And there is. Streamlining your communications is one of the quickest upgrades you can make. And, and that's why this episode is brought to you by Quo spelled Quo, the smarter way to run your business communications. 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- [12:36]
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- [13:07]
John Karalis
Thanks for making Lockdown Celtics your first listen every day and for making it the number one Celtics podcast. And it's on the number one sports podcast network on the planet. That's because you, the everydayer who's with me every Monday through Friday, made it that way. And that is just, just incredible. I really do. Thank you. And we have podcasts for everything. So you want to get the Pistons side of things? Go listen to lockdown Pistons. Maybe you're like all of us and all of the Celtics after the game. We didn't even do the post game interviews until after the national championship game. You know, we got locked on college football. We got all of the teams covered. If you want to go listen to something there, whatever you want to listen to, we've got it covered. It's the number one sports podcast network on the planet. So one of the things that was difficult for the Celtics and for both teams is there was no flow in this game. Peyton Pritchard, I asked him the question. He's like, I was joking on the floor during the game. Like, I'm not even working up a sweat here because it was just constant foul, foul, foul review. Oh, another review, another foul, more free throws, another review. It took forever for this. I mean, as it is, it's 1:30 in the morning right now and I'm recording this podcast which is well past my normal time, but it's just because everything took so long in this game. 8:00 clock start, plus all of the other stuff, plus NBC peacock with the longer breaks, all of that. It just this, you could not get into any real rhythm in this game and it showed. I think the Celtics kind of struggled. Overall, they shot less than 40%, 39.8%. I think this is the fourth time this season that that's happened. It's, it's not, it's not a regular occurrence for the Celtics. And Jaylen Brown was particularly affected. Again, I just think maybe some of it was the legs. Maybe he was, you know, coming off of that, that Hawks game, I don't know what it was, but he shot 11 of 28. This is not an efficient night for, for Jalen, 32 points on 28 shots. Like 32 points, 11 rebounds, two assists a block. He was 8 of 10 from the line, but the two missed free throws, poor timing on those. But 11 of 28 shooting, 2 of 8 from 3. The efficiency. If he wasn't 8 of 10 from the line, his true shooting percentage would have been so much worse. As it was, it's below 50, which is not great. But Jalen, like if he's not, if he's not shooting with the efficiency, then that becomes a problem for the Celtics. In the Celtics offense, like they put up 103 points. That's not what the Celtics offense has been. The Celtics have been. Their offensive ratings been upwards of 121, 122, 120 plus points per 100 possessions. You're. You should be putting up 115, 120 points in a game like this. They just couldn't get it going. The. Like I said, the flow wasn't there. You couldn't get into any semblance of a regular offense. Like, okay, we're going to find this hot hand. There's no. There were a couple of stretches where Peyton got hot and Sam got hot, but without the float of this game, it just, it really devolved into a lot of Jalen just trying to hunt a mismatch and going at the. The Pistons and part of why Jalen was inefficient. Yes. Physicality. There's. They're going to be plenty of people, and Jalen included who are going to say the officiating, you know, blah, blah, blah. He should have gone to the line. He went to the line 10 times. He could have gone online 20 times. Okay, there may be some of that, but they allowed those physical plays throughout the game. There's a lot that was let go. I don't think there was a. An officiating discrepancy in this game really at all. Do they. Did they let some stuff go that might have been a foul in other games? Yeah, maybe. But that's how they were calling this game. And I think both sides were called pretty equally here. The Pistons defense was incredible. Obviously the physicality manifested itself in a lot of tough shots. They blocked nine shots. The Celtics were 8 of 14 in the 8 of 14 in the restricted area. At least four or five of those misses were blocked shots by the Pistons. So even with the Celtics getting into the paint and trying to drive. They, they were met with a lot of defensive resistance, a lot of block shots, some really, really nice plays. Cade Cunningham had a couple of blocks, Isaiah Stewart had a couple of. Hit one block on Namish Kada, which was incredible. They made, they made great defensive plays. Pistons are legit. They, they really play tough and it's tough to score on them. You got to be hitting your jumpers against the Pistons because getting into the lane is going to be tough. And then you get like Jalen Duran doing his thing, put back dunks and all that stuff. He had that one put back where he like stuck his tongue out, was like shaking on the rim. And it was like, you know, in that moment, what are you going to do? Like, stop him if you don't want him to do that? So the, the inefficiency I think was, stemmed from the physicality. I think the, the, the tough shooting night was because of the, the Pistons defense for the most part. Some guys got going and, and you know, we can get into that. The turnovers early and the foul trouble were, were a big issue. You know, Garza 4 fouls early and Keda at one point like turned an ankle and he, he was in foul trouble and he had to sit and they went with Xavier Tillman for a little bit and that didn't work out particularly great because he sat and never came back. They treat, they tried Baylor scheireman at the 5 and that didn't, it didn't last very long. They went into the second half and the fouls on Garza and Keita kind of went away. Kate got into fall trouble later on and that, that did hurt. But Garza was able to kind of hang around a little bit more so they didn't have to go to any of that experimental stuff like, look, sorry, Xavier Tillman. It's just, it's. It's not happening. He played so fast. He really looked sped up out there and. Which is not his, not his fault necessarily. He hasn't played and you know, you get in there and all of a sudden it's like I said, it's a playoff type atmosphere. Yeah, he got sped up a little bit. The Charman minutes weren't horrible at as at the 5, but that's not something you want to go to. And they were small. The Pistons were a little small too, so. But you don't want to deal with that. You don't want to go with that for too long. So the, the foul trouble hurt them. The turnovers at one point it was 16 to 0. The Pistons had a 16 to 0 advantage and turnover points off turnovers. The Celtics didn't turn the ball over an extraordinary amount more than usual, but it was ended up being like 14. Wow. There is some real stuff going on behind me. I never know how, how that, how that's being. That's coming across on my audio. But anyway, the, the, the, the turnovers kind of subsided. The live ball turnovers kind of subsided in the second half, although there were still a lot of like offensive fouls, illegal screen type of things that were happening. So it ultimately was 19 to 4. The final tally in points off turnovers. The Celtics just every time they made a mistake, it cost them, especially early first half. First quarter, the turnovers. Just when you're trying to kind of deal with a team that's as physical as, as the Pistons are, and I know you're probably sick of hearing me say physical, physical, physical, but that it's just the name of the game. That's the story of this game. You can't, you got to be crisp. You gotta, you gotta hold on to the ball. You gotta be the, the details, those little details are what matter in a game like this. And it also matters to get like somewhat decent performances from the guys that you normally rely on, which makes the Derek White performance just tough on a night like this. Something that, you know, he went so long making threes and now all of a sudden he's, he's kind of falling into a rut. Let's get into the individual performances when I wrap up the show, when I come back. Today's show is brought to you by TurboTax. It's tax season, but it does not have to take over your Life. This year, TurboTax is making it easier than ever to just hand off your taxes and move on with your day. With TurboTax Full Service, you can have your taxes done for you by a trusted local expert, start to finish, without the stress of guesswork. Instead of spending hours trying to figure out what forms you need and all of that stuff, you can meet with a local TurboTax expert in person or connect online. They handle everything from W2s to self employed forms and they work to get you every deduction. 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- [22:53]
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- [23:13]
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- [23:23]
John Karalis
Thank you for making Lockdown Celtics your first listen Every day you are with me every Monday through Friday. You're an everydayer. How about joining the Everydayer club? What you get for being an everyday or club member. Ad free audio which is compatible with every major podcasting app. So you get that, which is I think a popular feature. The Discord server. Access to our Discord server so you get in game conversations and conversations with a lot of people around the league even and merchandise drops, all that kind of stuff. Lockdown celtics.supercast.com Lockdown celtics.Supercast.com To join the everyday club. Five bucks a month. That's it. If you want to pay for a year up front, you pay 50 bucks for the year for ad free audio all year. That's two months free. If you pay upfront, 50 bucks. So lockdown celtics.supercast.com so you look at little things that could, could have been done right? It's the, it's the little turnovers. It's Duncan Robinson flying into the corner throwing a ball up over his head. Cade Cunningham coming down within the Pistons scoring. That type of play you got to make, right? It's the little plays where you have it in your hand and it slips through. You got to secure those balls, those little things. It's the hey, can somebody please box out. Jalen Durant. Can somebody please keep him off the boards? He had three offensive rebounds to kill the Celtics. I know the Pistons are a big time offensive rebounding team. Just, just one, just block him out once. Can you do it? If you can, great. And just find, find a way to make your buckets. And that's a 1 or 1 of 11 night from Derrick White. And like he did other things right. Nine rebounds, five assists. He had Three block shots, two block shots. And you know, he was a plus nine in a game that they lost by one, which is, you know, it means something, right? That that's actually a meaningful kind of stat. So he wasn't a net negative, but it's all about making buckets. And Derek O of 6 from 3. It's so funny because he. He had 77 games in a row where he had hit at least one three. Then he missed three of them in Miami, and now he's missed. He missed six here in Detroit. So all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Derek White's lost his shooting touch, which is a little problematic. Okay, so, you know, it happens, right? Everybody has a bad night. So some of the other Celtics get. Get Sam Houser, try to find him a couple more shots, try to find Peyton Pritchard a little bit more. Pritchard was one of the guys that actually had it going. 5 of 8, 3 of 6 from 3, find him a little bit more. Anthony Simons did not have it going. 1 of 6 from 3, 4 of 11 from the field. That's, you know, you just gotta find these guys. Like, okay, is. So Simons and White didn't have it. That means find the guys that do. You gotta. You just gotta make those adjustments and find. Find Pritchard. Let Pritchard, you know, let Pritchard be the one that attacks Duncan Robinson every once in a while. So look, you can easily look at this game and say, a few more shots and the Celtics win this game. They shot for less than 40%. You have a normal shooting night, any kind of normal shooting night, they win this game a normal shooting night. From three, which, okay, 30, 32%. Not. Not even you hit a couple more of those. If you make a couple of your fourth quarter free throws, if you turn the ball over a couple times less. Those are all the things that if you do one of those things, just one of those things, you might win this game. So as unfortunate as it is that the Celtics didn't do all of those things, you can easily say, you can chalk up a lot of it to, hey, played a tough team, it's a tough one to. To, you know, fight through all of that stuff. Maybe if you. You don't do it at the end of a road trip, maybe things are a little bit different. The Celtics have been on the road for a little while, right? This is their. What is it, 1, 2 to 4, 4th game, 5th game in the road. So you know that this is when your legs do get heavy. It's the middle of January, maybe in a different situation, they, they win this game again. I'm not bothered by it. I, I'm not. I, I think this is a tough loss and you could look at it and say many, many things could have gone differently, but it's because so many of those things could have, could have gone differently that you look at and say, you know what? Hey, a lot of the stuff, it just happens. Peyton Pritchard had a very much of, you know, a lot of this stuff just happens and you have to deal with it. Play with this kind of effort, this kind of physicality against a lot of the teams that have, have, you know, that you've lost to recently, you'd be okay. So if they play like this against the Pacers on Wednesday, they'll be fine. I'm gonna wrap it up here as all kinds of things are happening behind me and the arena is being turned over for, I don't know, maybe a hockey game or whatever. So I'm gonna wrap it up there. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. I appreciate you being with me and every day or every Monday through Friday. The show is free. It's available everywhere. Bonus podcasts on the weekends you can watch a show on YouTube and then I would love it if you shared the podcast. Tell everybody they should be listening to and watching the Lockdown Celtics podcast. Here on the Lockdown Podcast Network is your team. Every day.
- [29:06]
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John Karalis
Prices and participation may vary.
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