← Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
Chris Boucher TORCHES Former Team as Celtics CRUMBLE Late | Hidden GEMS Ready to Breakout?
00:22:23
Celtics' preseason rollercoaster: From 27-point lead to stunning loss against Raptors. Can Boston overcome rebounding woes and find their rhythm? John Karalis of Boston Sports Journal dissects the Boston Celtics' unexpected defeat, highlighting Chris Boucher's revenge game and Neemias Queta's struggles. The analysis covers the team's slower pace without key players, Josh Minott's defensive contributions, and Joe Mazzulla's strategic substitutions. Karalis explores the Celtics' glaring rebounding issues and looks ahead to a crucial matchup with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Tune in for expert insights on how these preseason performances might shape the Celtics' regular season strategy and roster decisions.
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I'm Scott Hanson, host of NFL Red Zone. Lowes knows Sundays are for football. That's why we're here to help you get your next DIY project done. Even when the clock isn't on your side. Whether that's a new Filtreat filter or Bosch and Cobalt power tools, Lowe's has everything you need to feel like the MVP of diy. So get it done and earn your Sunday Shop now in store and online. Lowe's official partner of the NFL it was a very ugly finish to a very different game, but at least we got a Chris Boucher revenge game. We're gonna talk about it on a bonus Locked On Celtics Podcast. Huh? Be ever ready. It's the seas. Who else could it be? What they gonna say now? Screaming like JT Corralis recap madness Every game, every practice, prime time Jeopardy. White on the sideline. Rennie J. How we started raising banners. How we finish Locked on Celtics pod, Home of the winners. Hey, welcome back to the Lockdown Celtics Podcast right here on the Lockdown Podcast Network where it is your team every day, Monday through Friday, your team is the Boston Celtics bonus podcast. When they play on a Friday or a Saturday. That's what this is. So it's all free. It's all available everywhere you get your podcasts. It's on YouTube. If you're not watching the show, you can watch and get into the comment section there. Share your thoughts with me. I'm John Corrales, beat writer for Boston Sports Journal. I've been doing a version of somehow covering the Celtics for about 20 years now. I've also written a couple of books about the team. Today we're talking about the Celtics loss, a loss to the Toronto Raptors after being up by 27. A late loss, but okay, rough finish. Later on, we'll get to the rebounding issues. We'll talk about this, the consistency of Josh Minot, Luca Garza. We'll get to Chris Boucher's revenge in a few minutes, but let's get it out of the way. First of all, thank you to the Toronto Raptors. I think overtime in preseason should be outlawed. I think if teams do go into overtime, they should be fined. Each individual should be fined. The franchise should be fined. The owner should be fined. We do not need overtime basketball. And in the preseason, it's okay if a preseason game ends in a tie. No one needs that. No one needs the extra five minutes. So. But good. The Raptors won the game. Good for them. The end of the game was just gross, ugly. No one at the end of the bench. None of the two way guys, no one earned minutes. In the fourth quarter of this game. There were minutes to be earned. There were impressions to be made. But the Celtics turn the ball over 10 times in the fourth quarter, 11 times in the third quarter. They, they just, I mean, talk about giving the game away. And. Yeah, all right. The end of the game was, you know, Amari Williams and Kendall Brown and Max Shulga and, you know, just guys that we're not going to see, guys that are about to get cut, all of that stuff. So no one, no one's making a big deal of that. But here's your chance to make an impression. You know, the. The game is slipping away. Can somebody have some composure? Can somebody have a little bit of, like, ability to slow things down? Everybody got caught up in that moment. Toronto put in a, you know, put up a lot of pressure. And the Celtics, the, The guys who were out there as Celtics caved. They completely caved. And so tough. One good learning experience, though. And, you know, I'm sure there's gonna be plenty of film that those guys are gonna go over individually. It's a harsh lesson that a lot of these guys are going to learn. So now that's out of the way. I think the big story, at least team wise, is the pace was much different in this. No Jalen Brown, no Derrick White. Who else said no Sam Houser, Jordan Walsh sat because of the, the groin issue. But the, the main players, Brown, White, Houser, not having them definitely, obviously changes things because those are your two best players and your best shooter. So. And that, and that changed a lot of, I think, how this game was played because Anthony Simons is a big time ISO player. Payton Pritchard is. Is a big time ISO player. He isolates a lot of. He's got a great handle. He can really dribble the ball. But that means that he creates a lot of his own stuff and that's his game. I want to see if. If Pritchard is going to be the starter or Simons is going to be the starter. One of them is going to have to adjust to the pace in the style. And what we saw against the Memphis Grizzlies. And again, the Grizzlies was like a decimated team. And. And the Raptors sat all of their starters. The Raptors sat out. Let's see. Scotty Barnes, R.G. barrett, R.J. barrett, Brandon Ingram, Jakob Pearl, quickly, Garrett. Like, all of these guys didn't play. So their. Their starting lineup was, you know, the same. It's the same idea as the Memphis thing is all of their starter set. So we. We haven't seen the Celtics against the main, like, competition, but these guys that were out there, whoever was on the floor, pressure, really good defense. I thought the pressure early on, picking up full court, definitely slowed the pace down. And then we saw Simons dribbling the air out of the ball waiting for a pick. We saw Pritchard dribbling the air out of the ball waiting for a pick. The. The first quarter of this game especially looked a lot more like the Celtics that we normally see is a lot slower. Their pace number was at 100. And even that, I think, was exaggerated. They turned the ball over 29 times. And like I said in the second half, they're. The turnovers pace is a measure of possessions per 48 minutes. And the turnovers factor into it. Right? Each. Each time you turn the ball over, you have it. You turn it over. That's a possession. The other team gets it, they go and you get the ball back. You're getting these quick possessions, one. One after another. I'm not. The pace number was not. They said it was 100. It's. It was not really 100. That's. That's not the pace they played at. They did not play at the pace of 100 possessions in this game. They played at a much slower pace, and it's just different. So again, without the get, without their main guys, it's a. It's a lot different. It's. I don't know if we should have expected them to play the style that we saw against Memphis, considering the two largely isolation guys that we. We saw. But we also didn't see a lot of the same level of screening. Namishkeda was. Look, people will. People will call me a hater. I'm not a hater. Let me just make this clear. I. I don't talk to Namish K much, but we just heard on Derek White's podcast, these guys love Neemi. And. And that's. That's great. Like, this is not a personal thing against Namishkeda. I just. I am very skeptical of his ability to start and. And contribute to this team on a regular basis. He'll have his stretches. I'll have like two, three games where he's really good, and then it'll. He'll have stretches where he's really bad, and it's kind of up and down. I don't know. He needs to prove that he can be a consistent guy. Now, to be fair to Namish, Keda, no Brown, no White, no Hauser changes the dynamic a little bit, changes the speed, changes the chemistry, all of that, and that. That needs time to develop. But Keda didn't do himself any favors. He didn't do himself any favors in this. The screening wasn't as tight. The screening wasn't as frequent. He did do do some decent things. It wasn't all bad. But I think when you look at the starters, the starters were up by 20, actually 27 at one point. Minot started was a plus 15. Boucher started was a plus 22. Pritchard started was plus 8. Simon started was a plus 1. Mimi started was a minus 3. Nemi's a minus 3. So that's. I'm. It's not super, super indicative, but it's just a little. Little piece of evidence in the pie, like, okay, well, that was not good. It was not a good game for Nami Ishkeda. I. I wanted to see the types of. The type of ball movement, the screening, all of that stuff that we were used to seeing in that first game and what we were promised, and that's not what we saw. So that. That makes, I think, Sunday's game against the. The Cavaliers, I don't want to say important, it's a preseason game, but I would love to see the real Celtics with everybody against the real Cavs with everybody, at least for one half. Give me 24 minutes of regular rotations. Let's see what you got, Cavs. Let's. You're supposed to be the best team, and they're hurt, but you're supposed to be the best team in the East. Let's give it to us. You know what I mean? Just hit the Celtics with everything you got. Celtics play with your pace. Play with everything. I want to see what it looks like against a team like the Cavs, that, that defense. I want to see it. You know, the Raptors, you went up 27 on our, you know, the back half of the Raptors, Raptors roster. But before the fringe guys blew the lead. I don't care that the fringe guys blew the lead. I don't care about the final score. The Celtics were up by 20 plus in each game. They, you know, we're not getting the full indication. Is Keda going to be, you know, good enough? Are, are these guys going to be, you know, who's going to be good enough and who's not? So I didn't like the pace in this game, but if Jalen and Derek were out there and pushing, I think it would have been a different story because I don't think Simons and Pritchard would have felt the need to create the way they did. But again, those, those guys that were out there. Pritchard scored 19 points in 25, almost 26 minutes. Simon scored 18 points, mostly in that third quarter. Pritchard did his damage in the first half. They were really good. The Celtics did put up a big lead. They, you know, they got Boucher. Boucher was incredible with his revenge. Let me take a break. We'll come back, we'll talk about Boucher, we'll talk about the consistency with Minot and Garza. That's all coming up when I come back. Today's show is brought to you by Prize Picks. You know, we all make decisions all the time. Wouldn't be nice to get paid when you're right about your decisions. Don't miss the excitement of this football season, basketball season, or any season here with Prize Picks where it's good to be, right? Prize Picks is fun. It's simple, and it's an easy way to get more excitement to these games. You just pick more or less on a player projection. So when Jalen plays, you want to pick more or less than 22 points. Do you want to pick? You want to go to football? You want to go to Drake Mays passing yards, you want to go to Saquon Barclays rushing touchdowns? You can do it all on Prize Picks super quick. 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Thank you for making Locked on Celtics your first listen every day. Check out Locked on Fantasy Basketball. Fantasy season is here. Josh Lloyd is going to get you ready. He's going to make you a smarter NBA fan. He's going to make you a fantasy champion. I can't guarantee it, but I feel good about that because Josh is going to get you all the information. If you're the only one in your league listening to Josh Lloyd, you will have a leg up. Find that podcast, wherever you found this one, Chris Boucher, right away in his first bucket was this crazy fade away left elbow where you look at the shot and you're like, well, that's crazy. And then he gets fouled and the shot goes in and you're like, oh, okay, this is how it's gonna go. So yeah, it was. Boucher was all about, all about the revenge. He said it after the game where he's like, I didn't want to talk to anybody because you know, it's focused. And whenever we play Toronto, whenever I come to Toronto, I'm not going to talk to anybody before the game. He's focused. He wants this. Man. I I love preseason revenge games. You never get preseason revenge opportunities. Boucher took advantage of it. Active you know, defensively, crashing the boards, he's just gonna be, I think, a good energy guy. I think his. His energy along with Josh Minot, but that, that's gonna be, I think, a spark for the Celtics. He. He's gonna be able to. I think he can just get up and down the floor. He can hit some shots. He's got a funky release, but the shots fall and he. He can do a little bit of. A lot of things. So I thought Boucher was, Was really good. Obviously maybe the brightest spot in this game. 19.7 of 10 shooting, 2 of 5 from 3, 3 of 4 from the line. Nine rebounds, three of them offensive. A couple of assists, a steal, a block. Just two turnovers. That's, you know, a team high plus 22. He was out there, man. He was getting after it. It was, it was fun to watch. So, yeah, Boucher got his revenge. I love the consistency of Josh Minot in just two games. I know it was against, like, the G League Raptors and the G League Grizzlies, but he's pretty consistent. I think, in, in what you see. I. I just feel like Minot is. This is what he is. This is the player that he is. This is what he's going to give you. It's. There's not a lot. Nothing's run for him. He just gets. Gets a couple of open looks from. From three, knocked one of them down from the corner. He'll. He'll get to the rim. He can cut the. I think he had one of the. Yeah, he had the, the cutting Shireman on the out of bounds play where Minot, like, bolted to the corner, planted, turned around, and, and it was this kind of weird angle alley oop, that. It was incredible. It was a. It was a really nice play. So, yeah, he's capable of doing a lot of things. He's obviously a defensive pest. Another block shot, another steel. So two more stocks for Josh Minot. The stock king. This, this is the. The now 6 of 10. Is he gonna get 10 shots? He's gonna be able to do this all the time? I don't know. But consistently getting, Getting himself to the rim, getting himself in the right spots. I like, I like Minot. I really do. Again, I'm glad I wrote about him first, and I think that that was. There's a reason why I focused in on him. I think he can be a real wild card. So I thought he was good. Same with Luca Garza, who. Same kind of. Same kind of game. 12.6 rebounds. So we had 10 and 10 against Memphis. 12, 6 in this one. 3 of 7 from the field, missed a couple of his three pointers but 6 of 7 from the lines. Once again, Garza gets to the line, gets fouled. That's a product of him setting good screens, rolling, catching, going up, going up for offensive rebounds, getting, getting fouled on the putbacks. That's all good energy stuff. So good smart cut cuts, good smart picks, good timing on those. I, I think Garza has real potential to be an offensive game changer off the bench. Defensively, where's we still have to see. I can't make any judgments about him defensively. I can't make any judgments about Simons defensively. He had a few fouls early. I had three fouls right away. He was trying, he showed some decent things. But I, I need to see him against like real, real, real players. But I think Garza, again, consistent, consistently showing this is what he's going to be. So I like the, I like the Minot Garza consistency, rebounding issues still. The Celtics grabbed 68 and a half percent of their defensive rebounds. That's slightly up from 66% also two numbers that would have been at the bottom of the league last year. This is not a good trend to two defensive rebounding percentage games. Below 70% is awful. Awful. Shout out to Joe for making the early substitutions in the first half. Whenever someone botched a defensive rebound, he immediately went to the bench, pulled that guy out scalp, picked up on that, called that out on the broadcast. After the game, Joe was asked about that and he completely denied it. He said it was about playing with tempo and pushing the pace. I think that's a load of crap. I think Joe's protecting his players. He's not going to call them out for their lack of rebounding. But that's because he said after the last game we need to kill that narrative. So he's not going to talk about it. But that was 100% substitutions about guys who were not rebounding, not defensive rebounding. Now could we say it was code and he can say maybe this is so Joe just clicked in my head, him saying it's about tempo and playing with tempo. It's because you need to grab the defensive rebound so you can play with that tempo. So he's gonna say, I guarantee you, I'm just, I'm. This is real time. Like a conversation in my head with fake Joe Missoula in my head where he'd be like, no, no, absolutely. It was absolutely about tempo. You need to grab the defensive rebound, to. To go play with tempo and pace. So absolutely, I wasn't lying. Like, yes, that's true, I suppose, but it was disingenuous in the way it was presented. So my. That's my brain on full display on a Friday night. I. I liked that he was willing to do that. And with this group that played, you could do that, you could pull all these guys out if they weren't defensive rebounding. So message sent. And I. It got better. It got better over the course of the game, but that at the beginning was just incredibly bad. They gave up 15 more offensive rebounds, but the first quarter offensive rebounds, 11 in the first quarter. And that's where they had their biggest problem. So good for them for only giving up what I say the number was in the overall. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 15. So they only gave up four the rest of the way. That's a big, big improvement. But you still have to get in there and rebound. So overall, you know, again, I. I don't care so much about the end of the game. Like, blowing the lead with the guys they had on the floor. It's, like I said before, was incredibly disappointing. It's disappointing to see those guys not be able to close this thing out. And, you know, to them, the win is important to us. Eh, whatever. But it was good to see some good individual performances. Some guys obviously need to step up. I need to see more from something. Baylor Shireman was not good, not good in this game. Five turnovers for him, five for Keda. They were the two leaders for the Celtics. Shireman had a bad stretch, a. He had a. A turnover, a layup, an inbound turnover, which turned into a bucket. It was just all. That was bad. So. And then just a ton of turnovers. He's not a point guard. They. They were playing him at point guard and, you know, because of his passing ability, I guess, but that was. That was a bad idea. So he was not good. Just need to see more from him. Need to see more from Keda. I just. I'm begging the Celtics and the Cavs on Sunday to actually play half of a real basketball game. Just give me half of a real basketball game. Right? This has got to be the one game where the two teams go, okay, you know what? Let's just square up. Let's just square up and go test yourself, Joe Mazil. Joe Mazool is a big test yourself guy. Test yourself. Now's the time. Test yourself. And then who cares about the last preseason game? We'll move on to the regular season after that. That's your bonus podcast. Thank you all for listening for watching the Lockdown Celtics podcast. I'll be back after the Sunday game. Like I said, Cavs Sunday night in Boston, so make sure you subscribe. Wherever you get your podcast you can listen so you can watch. Get into the comments section on YouTube page if you are watching and then I would love it if you shared the podcast and told everybody that they should be listening to and watching the Lockdown Celtics podcast. Here on the Lockdown Podcast Network is your team every day. Our state has changed a lot in the last 140 years. We know because MultiCare has been here guided by a single purpose, making our communities healthier. That comes from making courageous decisions, partnering with local communities to grow programs and services, and expanding healthcare access to those who need it most. Together, we're building a healthier future. Learn more@ multicare.org.
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