
Can the Boston Celtics recover from another shocking fourth-quarter collapse against the New York Knicks? With star players Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown unable to score for over eight minutes, the Celtics' playoff hopes hang in the balance. John Karalis of Boston Sports Journal breaks down the Celtics' performance, questioning their poise and execution in crucial moments. He analyzes the strategic decision not to call a timeout and discusses Kristaps Porzingis' impact despite his illness. The episode also highlights the Celtics' first-quarter struggles and the importance of their upcoming Game 3 at Madison Square Garden. Will the Celtics capitalize on their strong road record and turn the series around? Tune in for an in-depth analysis and insights into the team's path forward.
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T Mobile has the best mobile network in the US based on an analysis by UK of speed test intelligence data 1H 2025 CT mobile.com network it happened again. The Boston Celtics collapsed again. They're down 02 to the Knicks. They're in trouble. We'll talk about it right now on the Lockedon Celtics podcast. Uhhuh. Be down, be ever ready Recognize the city of champs back to back if I say it a 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 gonna say now? Screaming like JT Corralis recap the madness every game, every practice best daily pod no cap like Brad Beckett clutch like you to KP tap in daily prime time Depp and D White on the sideline Ren and Jace how we 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 does your team every day And I got you covered Monday through Friday bonus podcast on the weekend Celtics play game three Saturday afternoon. So I will be podcasting from Madison Square Garden. I believe they close that building early, but it's an afternoon game so I should be there. So make sure you're subscribed. Watch the show on YouTube, get into the comment section, let me know what you think. I'm John Corrales. I. I'm covering the Celtics as a beat writer for Boston Sports Journal. I've been covering the team for 20 years. I've written a couple of books. I got my finger on the pulse of this team. So make sure you're subscribed, Watch the show like I said and today's show is brought to you on by game time. Download the GameTime app, create an account, use the code locked on NBA for $20 off your first purchase. If you are watching the show on YouTube, you're seeing me in my usual setup at home and not at the arena. Because on top of everything, after the game, in the middle of the interviews and if you're watching the the Knicks, they had Brunson and Josh Hart and in the middle of a Josh Hart answer, the fire alarm started going off. We were in the other room waiting for Jason Tatum to come out and never got to talk to Jason Tatum after this game because something I think caught fire. We all left, we got evacuated and we were not let back in. Jason Tatum went home. And so that's the perfect topping on this crap Sunday where The Celtics lost 91 90. We'll get into individual stuff. Kristaps Porzingis coming up, A rant. Sure, that's coming up. And I'll explain why no timeout was called. That actually was the right call. Trust me, that was the right thing to do. I'll explain why in just a second. But first we got to start with the fact that this happened again. What? How did this happen again to the Celtics? The Celtics were up by 30, I mean by 20 again. And it looked very similar, right? They were up 70 to 50. The Knicks hit a three. The Celtics answered. It was 73, 51. Very similar to game two, which was a couple minutes earlier in the third quarter. But the Celtics went 72, 52. The Knicks hit a three. The Celtics answered. It was 75, 55. And then the Knicks started walking down the lead. They did the same thing here. And then the fourth quarter happened and it was an unmitigated disaster. A disaster. The Celtics went 8 minutes and 21 seconds, 8 minutes and 21 seconds without making a basket. Payton Pritchard hit a 3 with 840 to go. Then the next basket the Celtics made was Jason Tatum a dunk with 19 seconds to go. How is that possible that the Celtics, this offense is high powered offense. I sat here and was like, oh yeah, the Celtics are going to feel all this unencumbered against this Knicks defense, which is okay, but not great. And yeah, the Celtics going to have some fun here. The Celtics can be more like themselves and. And you cannot score. The Boston Celtics cannot score a bucket in more than eight minutes in the fourth quarter against the New York Knicks. What is your problem? So the Celtics offense again disappeared. Just like game one. The Celtics scored 23 points in the third quarter and 16 in the fourth. In game two, it was 23 points in the third quarter and 17 in the four. Two straight games of fourth quarter, 16 and 17 points. That is unacceptable. It's unacceptable. And this is where I start to get like, I'm actually. This time I'm worked up because I laughed off that first game because I thought, okay, outlier shooting bad. Just a bad shooting night. A couple of. Couple of makes here and there. And this is a different story. And honestly, it's the same. Literally the same thing. I could have re queued the last podcast and maybe had AI change my voice to just update the details and that would have been fine. I don't know if anybody would have known the difference because it's the same story. Although the Celtics weren't just putting up threes, they were attacking the. The Celtics didn't attack the. The attacking didn't go particularly great either. It's not like the Celtics were getting to the rim with super, super effectiveness and were. Were scoring and then they abandoned it that they. They were not great in the paint. In fact, let's see here. The Celtics were. I'm gonna open up this thing real quick and maybe I can share the shot chart. Well, it doesn't matter. There were 16 of 21 in the paint, but they missed a bunch of. Bunch of them early. I'm sorry, it's a restricted area. There were five of 21 outside the restricted area, but they missed a bunch of layups early on. They had some success later, but they missed a bunch early on. And ultimately in the paint. Overall paint numbers, 21 of 42, 50% in the paint, which should be much higher than that. But the Celtics weren't effective in any offensive manner. They just weren't. I cannot, I just cannot understand the. The lack of poise and which team. Which team out there is the team that won the championship and which is the one that's learning, you know, how to play with each other in the playoffs for the first time. Which one is it? Because I'm looking at the Celtics and saying, boy, you know, if this was last year, I would have understood it two years ago, I would have understood it post championship. I don't understand this performance. Let me quickly explain the timeout before I get into my. My rant. So the Celtics were down one, and Jalen Brunson gets the foul on Drew Holiday. Holiday knew it. He was pissed at himself. Celtics down 1 right 13 seconds to go with one timeout. And people are saying, you call the timeout, set up a play. It's the NBA, first of all. It's the NBA. You know your plays, you know what to run. Everybody should be pretty well versed, right? You've had a stoppage with the free throws. Any subs you needed to make could have. Could have been made. The Celtics didn't make any. The Knicks made theirs. So you knew what your matchups were going to be. You can call them out. There was no, no reason to stop and draw things up on a board. You knew you have a. A bunch of plays that you can set. You have a whole playbook. You have Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown and Derrick White, now Horford and Drew Holiday. You have guys who have done it. Like I said, they won a championship. So with 13 seconds left, down one, you push to get down the floor because you want to preserve that timeout in case you miss. If you call a timeout, you go down, you miss, and then you foul. You leave yourself with a full court. So you're down one, you go down, you miss, you follow somebody. They hit two free throws. By the time you inbound it, you have, like, what, 12 seconds to get the ball up the floor. That's desperation. But if you come down with 13 seconds, you got three or four seconds to advance it. That's nine, 10 seconds to get it over half. By the time you get over half court, you should have three or four seconds, which is a lot of time. Thousand one, thousand two, one thousand three, thousand four. That's a lot of time for pick cut, something to, to put a shot up. In fact, when Jason Tatum drove left, it looked like he was going to get a baseline shot up. A baseline fade away. Maybe not the best shot in the world, but it was. It looked to be like he was going to get that fade away in a. In a clean look, but he decided to pass it out at the last second. And by the way, side note, when I say Jayson Tatum, post fadeaways is the playoff shot. That's the Paul Pierce type of play that you should have gone to in that situation. That's why he's Jayson Tatum. That's why you have a guy like that to hit those shots in those moments. You got to Paul Pierce that thing. Okay, fine. He takes. I thought he was going to take that baseline jumper. So you don't call the timeout because it didn't look like he was stuck. It looked like he was getting to a spot Rising up and shooting at that point. Four seconds, the shot goes up. Three, it was either going to miss, maybe you get the offensive rebound put back. But if they get the rebound, you get a chance to foul, even if it's with one and a half seconds left. At least with the foul, you come down, they hit one or two, you. Then you call the timeout. That's when you call the timeout, advance the ball and. And now you give yourself a second opportunity to at least tie the game or win the game, depending on how the free throw game goes. That's why you hold on to the timeout. In that situation, you rely on NBA pros to run a play, which they should be able to do, get a shot off, which they should have been able to do. And then you save the timeout in case you miss. If he hits it, great. Now you play defense for two seconds, win the game, go home. It's the NBA. It's not college, it's not middle school, it's not high school, it's the NBA. Trust your players championship caliber players to come down and make a play, get a shot off. You save that timeout for the. Just in case, just in case you stay cold and the shot doesn't fall. That's why you save the timeout. That was the right call. I was talking about it on media row while a free throw was going on. I was sitting there talking to Bobby Manning of clns. He was like, you don't call a timeout. Or do you call out? No, you don't call a timeout. You just go. I knew, I knew ahead of time. You don't call a timeout. That's just. To me, that's basic and, and it played out. The only problem I have was that the Celtics players did not execute in that moment. All right, that gets me. I've already started my rant. I. I can't help myself. The rant is coming next. Today's show is brought to you by Upwork. Scaling your business requires the right expertise at the right time. 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Last minute tickets, lowest prices guaranteed. Thanks for making lockdown Celtics your first listen every day go check out Locked on NBA Game night covering every night in the association now with the playoffs you get a lot more in depth stuff. I'm there on Fridays so I'll be doing tomorrow night's show, tomorrow night's game games. I don't even see what the schedule but I'll be there with Jake Madison. So check it out wherever you get your podcast on the locked on NBA feed. So the Celtics. This is. This goes beyond nuance analysis of plays. All the little stuff that I that I tend to do right. My my love for the game is in the nitty gritty of how did these things happen? Why did these things happen? And to try to explain to you some of these things that happen at the NBA level that maybe you're not aware of. But sometimes it's not even about strategy. It's not about the play. It's not about the the the right pick, the right read all of that. Sometimes it's just about being better. The Celtics have a championship. The Celtics Won a championship last year, and yet they are playing in these two fourth quarters like they're panicky, like they don't know what they're doing. It's like it's two, three years ago all of a sudden. What happened to the poise? What happened to the championship aura of this team? What happened to, you've won a title. You can play carefree, Nothing bothers you anymore. You've played on the biggest stage. I asked Kristaps Porzingis before the series started about playing an msg, and I got a lot of crap on social media for these guys, you know, for asking him that question. And he was like, oh, you're gonna make it seem like we're like, oh, you know, bright lights right now. They can't handle the bright lights of the fourth quarter at home. So you know what? Yeah, I'm actually starting to get worried about how you're gonna perform and. And MSG people got on me for this. And it turns out that these guys, you know what? Maybe. Maybe they're not. Maybe they're not equipped to handle this. Maybe I was. Maybe I was so wrong about who they were that I. My. My bravado getting into this series was misplaced. I believed in these guys, and I still believe in their ability. They were up 20 late in the third quarter in each of these games, not even playing their best basketball, but they found their way to get up 20, and then they lost it. They lost their poise. Where's. Where's the. Where's the Jayson Tatum buckets in the fourth quarter? Where's Jaylen Brown in the fourth quarter? At what point do you. You guys step up, make a play, make a shot? It's not even. It's not about anything besides making buckets in the fourth quarter. And sometimes the talent has to shine through. The talent has to step up. The talent. The Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum, Finals mvp, First team all NBA. Those guys have to make plays that a first team all NBA guy makes that a Finals MVP guy makes. It is unforgivable. Unforgivable for the Boston Celtics with Tatum and Brown to go eight plus minutes in a fourth quarter of a playoff game without a bucket. That is beyond. When I say outrageous. I don't know other words that can properly sum up. The talent has to shine through. Everybody knows what you're trying to do, right? We talk about this, about the playoffs all the time. Everybody knows what each other is doing. No one's calling any surprise plays. It's who has the talent and the execution to get this done. The Knicks. The Knicks with Brunson, and in this game, Josh Hart and in the past game, OG OG Anunoby. They have made shots. They got the looks. They made them. And the Celtics are not making them. It is unbelievable to me that a team. I don't care that Jalen Brown's knee might be hurting him. I don't care that Jason Tatum's wrist might be hurting him. Find another way. Draw a foul, throw yourself into somebody's body. Get yourself to the line. Trey Young, this thing. Do something. Do something to get a bucket. I don't care what it is. Score and get stops. Hey, how about. How about rebounding? How about holding them off? How about showing some poise, finding a guy, getting your body on him, not losing these rebounders and. And getting the stops and getting out, maybe getting a couple of buckets in transition. You're the Boston freaking Celtics. You are the Boston Celtics, the champs. What is wrong with you? To go up 20 and then just give it all away and completely just. I don't even. Can't even use the language that I want to. To hammer this point home. Who are you guys? Who are you guys? This is embarrassing. This is embarrassing. Like, Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum should be embarrassed that they could not score in the fourth quarter. Like Jason Jayson Tatum scored with 19 seconds to go. He made a basket in the fourth quarter. Jalen Brown did not score in the fourth quarter. The only person make more than one basket was Peyton Pritchard. He made two. Should have just left him in. Tatum scored four points in the fourth quarter. Jalen brown scored zero and was a minus 15. I don't care about the knee. The knee can't. I don't care how bad the knee is. You're out there. He tried to dunk on Og. Well, was it Jalen Brunson? He tried to try to end Jalen Brunson. So the knee's got to be good enough for you to try that. That dunk. So the knee should be good enough for you to. To make a shot. One shot. One of the four, make one. Jason, make another one. Two bus, two baskets. Derrick White, 0 for 3. Drew Holiday, nothing. 12 minutes, 0 shots. 0 shots. This is a championship team. This is. But they're playing like they. They don't know what they're doing right now, though. These two fourth quarters are absolutely embarrassing. They. They're fully capable of going to New York, winning. They could win four in a row. They could win this thing in six and I wouldn't be surprised. But right now I don't know what to expect when they go to New York, and I sure as hell don't expect them to hold the lead when they get one. All right, let's get to some individual performances when I come back. Because I'll go, you know, we'll just get to Porzingis. Porzingis is. Is. Is really the big thing. And then look ahead to game three. That's next. Today's show is brought to you by Open Phone. If you're running a business, you know that every missed call is money left on the table. Think about the last time you had an urgent need, maybe for a plumber or a service provider. If that first person didn't answer, did you wait? No. You moved on to the next person. That's why you need OpenPhone. It's the number one business phone system built to streamline and scale your customer communications, all from an app on your phone or computer. 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Very unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts. Thanks for making lockdown Celtics your first listen every day. Go check out lockdown Nicks. Maybe, maybe you don't want to hear the celebration, but I want to, you know, it's good. It'll be good to hear what their take is because after the last game, they were still not sold on the Knicks winning. But now you're up to nothing. You. All you got to do is win two more games. Two out of the next six, you go two and three and you're moving on to the conference finals. So it's a hell of A position to be in. Chris Ops Rosingis was back. He did not start. He's dealing with the illness. It is related to the past illness. He said it's kind of like an up and down thing. He's not feeling his best. It's killing him that he's not at his best right now, and he's. He's just not. His energy is not there. I don't know what the illness is. I don't know what it is that could linger this long. I could take guesses, but I don't know. It's just a guess. They said it's something viral. I don't know. They've been saying it's non, non Covid, but I don't know. I have no idea. But all I know is that he's not feeling his best. He's not playing his best. He sure. He had one stretch in the fourth quarter where he got a dunk off of Jason Tatum. Airball. I joked that, you know, Joe Missoula stole the Denver Nuggets play where Jokic had the airball and Aaron Gordon dunked it to the buzzer beater to beat the Clippers. I was very reminiscent of that. Plays looked very much, very similar. Then he hit a three at the other end, and it was like, almost like, okay, Porzingis is alive. Let's. Let's keep going to him. And then he had to come out. So, like, the Celtics aren't. They lost Hauser. He. And he was a key component to everything over the. Over the regular season. You get nothing from Porzingis. Tatum and Brown are playing like crap offensively for the most part. And that leaves not much like, Derrick White's gone cold. Drew Holiday's had his good moments but did nothing in the fourth quarter. Al Horford struggled in the fourth quarter. Think Al took some. Some tough, tough shots in the paint. And I think he was trying to do a little too much because he saw. He saw where this was going. He saw that the team wasn't scoring. So he kind of went old school with the post up and was like, all right, I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna try. I'm gonna try to score. And he put up some kind of tough hook shots. Look, I want to make sure that I'm giving the Knicks the proper credit here. They. They don't die. They come back, they have no problems playing from behind. And in the fourth quarter, no fear of the fourth quarter. They shot 12 of 24 in the fourth quarter. The Celtics were 5 of 24. So the Knicks found ways to make shots. They kept finding ways to make shots. They only went to the line four times. Three of four. They only made three three pointers. Celtics were two of 11, Knicks were three of 10. So almost even there. It's just the Knicks found ways to make buckets. Mikhail Bridges, Jalen Brunson, these guys found a way. Yeah, I'm at a loss for words, which is not easy for me. One thing that people were kind of worked up about was why do you foul Mitchell Robinson? Why were the intentional fouls before they were in the, in the bonus? Joe explained that I, I kind of thought it was an interesting explanation. It makes sense. Mitchell Robinson was a plus, a plus 9, 19 in the game, right? So the starters in an Obi Hart, Towns, Bridges and Brunson, that group was all negative. And Mitchell Robinson was a plus 19 at that point. Offensive rebounds and, and you know, defense and rebounding and offensive rebounding and all that stuff. So in the first half, Missoula was, well, yesterday, I'm sorry, game one, they went to that and, and Robinson got subbed out. So the Celtics, Joe Missoula decided, all right, we can't have Robinson in there. So they started fouling him as they got closer to the penalty. And it worked. They subbed him out. They the Tom Thibodeau subbed Robinson out. And so Missoula's reasoning was I needed to get the Plus 19 guy off the floor and that was the way to do it. So that worked in their favor. I wasn't a big fan of that move necessarily, but that explanation actually does make some sense to me. The Celtics did not take advantage of it, but I like that explanation. Actually this comes down to just execution. It really just comes down to execution. The Celtics are not executing and I shouldn't have waited this long to get to this the first quarter stuff. The first quarter is, I think was almost as important as the fourth quarter because the Celtics had a lead and they couldn't, they couldn't build on it. The first quarter, the Celtics were God awful, just couldn't hit a thing. They finished the first quarter up 24 13, but they shot 10 of 25. They were 3 of 6 in the restricted area, 2, 2 of 6 in the non restricted paint area. So 5 of 12 overall in the paint, you hit 2, 3 of those, that's 6 points. They were 1 of 3 from the line. If you hit those 2, that's 8 points. You tack those 8 points on, you get 32 to 13. Now it's a different story. The first quarter where the Celtics missed everything. Now the Knicks were missing everything too. But. And the Knicks would say, well, if we only taken advantage of that, maybe this game would have been different and they would have won and what, you know, in a bigger fashion. But for the Celtics, they had chances. You got to finish. You got to finish at the rim. They blew layups. They. It's the second game in a row that they blew layups. Gotta. Gotta make these easy shots. It just comes down to execution and finishing. That's it. That is it. The Celtics have shown themselves to be the better team for a large portion of the game. They are just so significantly worse in this fourth quarter that it's, it's. They're undoing everything decent that they did. And I can't help but think that the regular season, some of these habits that they had are, are kind of coming back to bite them. That December, January stretch where they kind of played like this, they played okay. And then the fourth quarter, they just kind of fell apart and it's like they, they didn't have the fight to finish. I just thought that that regular season was like, ah, you know, they. They weren't, they weren't putting in that extra effort. Now it's like now I'm wondering, I go back retroactively, I go, wait a minute. Did they. Were they just not able to close these games out? Were they not able to do it because they don't seem able to in this series. To close these games out. Gotta. Just gotta execute. Gotta come down, make a bucket. One of 17 over the last eight. 40 is. Is unacceptable. Unacceptable. Celtics go to New York now for game three on Saturday afternoon. It's a must win. Obviously. It's a must win. You can't go down three. Nothing. This is. I've said the Knicks best chance of winning is turning this into the 2023 Miami series. And we're kind of getting there. The Celtics can't hit a thing. Just complete outlier bad shooting. They are now 25 of 100 from 3. A lot of them are open looks. A lot of them were good looks. You just have to make them. And the Knicks are getting good shooting performances. Josh Hart had one good shooting performance in this game too. Anoby had a great shooting performance in game one. They're finding other guys. They're finding other guys to make shots. Just enough, just enough to win. Gotta go in on. On Saturday. You gotta win. You gotta find a way. You can't. You can't go down three oh, you can't pull that again. And it's funny, Joe Missoula had been saying like he's talking about champions not getting out of the second round for, I don't know, a decade or so, two decades, whatever it was. And here they are looking like they're not going to get out of the second round out of nowhere. So congrats, Knicks fans. You, you know, you're, you're going to be enjoying this comment section. I know a lot. There won't be a lot of Celtics fans. There's not a lot to, to fight about. I think a lot of Celtics fans are going to come into the comment section and be like, yeah, yeah, we agree we suck right now. So maybe whatever, whatever. It's. You're down.02. The Celtics are a great road team. The best road team, historically. Good road team. So go to Madison Square Garden, win two and then make it a three game series and then just take care of business. Right? But starts on Saturday. The formula is very simple. Execute and finish. Finish when you get easy looks, finish when you get open looks. Your NBA champions finish when you get open looks. That's going to do it. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being in every day or joining me Monday through Friday. I'll be there at MSG this weekend. I'll be there on Saturday. So make sure you're subscribed. Watch the show on YouTube and I would love it if you share 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. 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Host: John Karalis
Date: May 8, 2025
John Karalis reacts to the Celtics’ shocking 91-90 home loss in Game 2 of the second-round series against the New York Knicks, which drops Boston into a 2-0 series hole. With the team squandering another double-digit lead and completely melting down in the fourth quarter, Karalis delivers a passionate, sometimes scathing assessment of Boston’s poise, execution, and leadership. This episode ranges from granular play analysis to gut-level rants on what’s really going wrong with the reigning NBA champions.
On the Fourth Quarter Collapse:
“Unforgivable for the Boston Celtics, with Tatum and Brown, to go eight plus minutes in a fourth quarter of a playoff game without a bucket. That is beyond... outrageous.” (30:35)
On Jayson Tatum’s Missed Clutch Moment:
“When Jayson Tatum drove left, it looked like he was going to get a baseline shot up. ... That’s the Paul Pierce type of play you should have gone to in that situation. That’s why he’s Jayson Tatum. ... You gotta Paul Pierce that thing.” (17:30)
On Team Identity Crisis:
“Who are you guys? This is embarrassing. This is embarrassing. ... Jalen Brown and Jayson Tatum should be embarrassed that they could not score in the fourth quarter.” (31:00)
On Low Expectations and Fan Sentiment:
“I think a lot of Celtics fans are going to come into the comment section and be like, yeah, yeah, we agree we suck right now.” (49:55)
Karalis maintains his signature Celtics beat-writer blend: direct, frustrated, occasionally wry, and deeply invested in the team’s identity. He balances exasperated rants (“Who are you guys?”) with the analytic, X’s-and-O’s breakdowns listeners depend on.
This episode is a cathartic gut-check for Celtics followers. Karalis expresses genuine concern over the team's lack of resiliency, championship poise, and offensive execution in late-game pressure. As the series heads to Madison Square Garden, the Celtics face enormous urgency. Karalis warns: To avoid an early summer, they must “execute and finish” — and rediscover the mentality that made them champions just a year ago.