← Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
GRITTY: Boston Celtics GRIND Out Ugly Win | Anfernee Simons shows PROMISE
00:31:38
Boston Celtics grind out a gritty win against the Chicago Bulls, propelled by Anfernee Simons’ scorching second-half shooting and Payton Pritchard’s clutch buzzer beater. Can the Celtics’ relentless rebounding and defensive identity sustain their surprising climb in the Eastern Conference standings? John Karalis of Boston Sports Journal breaks down how the Celtics overcame cold shooting nights from stars like Jaylen Brown by capitalizing on second-chance points and forcing turnovers. Insights include Neemias Queta’s impact on the boards, the evolution of Simons’ rebounding game, and Joe Mazzulla’s emphasis on effort over aesthetics. Plus, the episode explores Boston’s unexpected rise to the second seed, the implications for their playoff seeding, and whether their developing bench can keep delivering. Are the Celtics ready to make a real push for the top spot?
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John Corrales
Foreign podcast network your team every day.
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Jake (State Farm Ad Voice)
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Jennifer (Discover Card Ad Voice)
Thy ticket lady Jennifer of Coolidge. Well, many thanks, good sir. Here is my Discover card.
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John Corrales
They accept Discover at Renaissance fairs?
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Jennifer (Discover Card Ad Voice)
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John Corrales
With the times. You're playing the loot.
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Jennifer (Discover Card Ad Voice)
Yeah, and it sounds pretty good, right?
- [00:58]
John Corrales
Discover is accepted at 99 of places that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nielsen report. It wasn't a pretty win, but it was still a really good win for the now second seed Boston Celtics. I'll talk about it right now on the Locked On Celtics podcast. Locked on Celtics pot. Home of the winning, baby. Hey there. Welcome back to the Lockdown Celtics podcast after. I know it's jarring that I cut all, all of that intro down and you just got that end. If you're new to the show, if you're, if you've been listening for a while, it's a little different intro. The whole point is to get to right to. To get to the point of the show, which I am not doing right now. But I've heard that the intro is now jarring. So I'm explaining it. I've cut it down. We're going to start getting right to the point of the show. So thank you for subscribing. Thank you for listening. Watching a show on YouTube. The show's free. It's available everywhere. Bonus podcast when they play on the weekends, which they're doing twice this weekend. So two bonus episodes coming up. If you're new to the show, I'm John Corrales, beat writer for Boston Sports Journal. I've been covering the Celtics in some form for about 20 years, doing this podcast for 10. And I've written a couple of books about the team as well. Today's show is brought to you by Game time. Download the GameTime app, use the code LOCKDOWN NBA for 20 off your first purchase of tickets, maybe to a Celtics game. So go check that out. Today we're getting into a win. Technically, it's A win. The Celtics had more points than the Chicago Bulls. And that's about the best thing I could say about this game. But actually, this is a good win, and I'm going to talk about that in just a second. Later on, we'll get into the whole seating thing and we'll get into Anthony Simons and Peyton Pritchard, who finally hit another buzzer beater, which he was very happy about. But let's just get right to it, because this, this was not the prettiest game in the world, which we expected. The Celtics coming off of the long road trip, like they said it, Anthony Simon said it. After the game, we knew that, that we were probably not going to play well. We all expected it. You. No one goes on a five game business trip, right? You go on a long business trip in five different cities over 10 days. You don't come back and go to work on Monday. Rip rare and to go, right? You. You come in, you're like, can I get a couple of days off, please? But you can't, because the schedule is relentless. So they have to come in here, they have to play this game. I will say right up front, I do think the Celtics were a little bit lucky in this game because the Chicago Bulls absolutely sucked. I. I want to give the Celtics defense enough credit, but also I want to be fair and say that they gave up a lot of shots and that the Bulls easily could have made, but the players who were out there for them in general were not as good as the players that are normally out there for them. They were missing a few guys. Kobe White came back off an injury. He was not himself at all. And so the Bulls were nowhere near themselves. And who they are in general is still kind of mediocre. So the Bulls were very complicit in this. The Bulls missed a ton of shots. The Celtics missed a ton of shots. It was. It was a very ugly game. You can see the tweets from those of us in the media were like, okay, this game kind of sucks. The building, first of all, building was freezing cold. Second of all, the shooting was freezing cold. There was no reason for these fans to be any sort of energetic in this, and they weren't. I swear I was hearing individual conversations at one point during this game from the fans, because the Celtics gave them nothing. But this is why this is actually a good win, because through all of that, through all of the cold shooting, the Celtics still did defend. They still forced a lot of turnovers, and they were able to capitalize on those Turnovers, they still went in there and grabbed the offensive rebounds. They, they did not shoot well. They came out in that typical first game back from a long road trip. Kind of the legs weren't there. Like Jalen Brown, his legs were not there. He followed up maybe the best regular season game he's ever had with one of the worst regular season games he's ever had with 14 points, 6 of 24 shooting. But they still, throughout it all, were going and grabbing offensive rebounds. Jalen had three offensive rebounds, Kada had six, Ugo had four, Garza had three. They ended up with 20 offensive rebounds. They finished with 26 second chance points to the Bulls 12. So the Celtics still managed to. Wait, am I frozen here? Okay, still going here. Sorry, technical glitch. The Celtics still managed to put forth the effort to still get to the boards, to still force the turnovers. And not only force the turnovers, get. Because it wasn't like they forced 20 of them. They forced 13, but they still got 19 points off of those. And they were able to protect the ball themselves. They didn't give in to all the other little things that a team can give into. You come back, you're tired, you're not shooting well. It's very easy to just be like, ugh, I'm done with this, the schedule, loss, whatever, who cares? We're just going to take the L and we're going to move on. And I think the Celtics of the past would have just gladly said that because last year's team, championship level team, they don't care necessarily about games like this because they just. Whatever, who cares? Who cares if you lose this game on January 5th to the Chicago Bulls? No, it doesn't matter at all. But for the team that's out there now, that's constantly trying to build an identity and build on the good things that they keep doing and honestly trying to prove a lot of people wrong or trying to prove a lot of early season predictions wrong. That team still needs to come in here with the effort. And credit to Joe Missoula, credit to Jalen Brown, credit to the leadership on this team, credit to the guys that are fighting. They have enough guys on this team that are fighting for their positions that they aren't going to give in on most nights to those little kind of excuses. Okay, the shooting wasn't there, but they still could put in the effort to track down offensive rebounds. They were missing shots, but you could still come back and defend and get into a passing lane and force a turnover. All of those things were important and it got the Celtics to a lead where they were shooting something like 20 something percent from 3 and Jalen was at that point, I think one of 10 or one of 11 from the field. And that stuff didn't matter because they were doing the other things. They were preventing the Bulls from doing those things. So to me, this isn't a pretty win. This isn't something that's going to go down. You know, when we go back through the, the course of the, the season and start picking on important games, this doesn't go down as any of that stuff. But it's still a nice win. It's still a really kind of good effort, a good way to just live up to that identity that they've been building. And again, that's a, that's a Joe thing. That's, that's a team wide thing and I, I think that's important. The offensive rebounds were huge. The turnovers they forced were huge. Now you got guys like Peyton, Pritchard, Anthony, Simons going off. They were able to buy themselves time with the. What the offensive rebounds and the turnovers did was buy themselves time until the shooters could get going. Is like Joe, Joe said it best after the game. It was like basically saying, I didn't like the way they looked, but I like the way they played. They looked like they were tired, but I like the way they're playing with that effort. And then you have a number of guys, Jalen, Sam, Peyton, Derek Anthony. You know, any of these guys could get going if you just keep playing the right way. And then Richard comes in, comes in and that's where I'm going to talk about when we come back. Today's show is brought to you by. FanDuel. Fridays already feel different during basketball season. FanDuel is making them even better every Friday night before games tip off. FanDuel gives fans a new way to kick off the weekend with NBA Happy Hour. 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In case you hit a cold streak like these guys were shooting behind me in this game, in case you hit one of those cold streaks, they'll help you stop and gamble responsibly. So do that. Check out NBA Happy hour only on FanDuel, the official sportsbook partner of the NBA. Today's show is also brought to you by Quo. It's a new year, new systems, and it's time for us to take a look at the messier parts of how businesses run so we can figure out what better way to do these things. There has to be a better way, and that's Quo, your communications one of the quickest upgrades you can make. And because with Quo, your team is reachable, organized, and communicating all in one place, you're not just working cleaner, you're creating more opportunities to connect with customers. Quo allows your whole team to call and text from one shared business number, so there's nothing that gets missed. Everyone sees the full conversation thread, which makes replies faster and more personal. And because they're all on the same page, the customer is happy. Because nothing upsets a customer more than when you're talking to two people in a company and they're not on the same page. It works right from the phone. Refrain from your phone or computer and you can even keep your existing number. And they've got the smart AI tools that automatically log calls, summarize conversations, and highlight next steps so details never slip through the cracks. Quo is the number one rated phone business system on G2, trusted by more than 90,000 businesses from solo operators to growing teams. So make this the year where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try quo for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.comlockdown MBA that's q u o.comlockdown MBA quo no missed calls, no missed customers. Thanks for making Lockdown Celtics your first listen every day. Go check out the Lockdown Every Dayers Club. All right, you're already in. Every day you're here with me Monday through Friday. You want a little something more. The Everydayers Club gives you access to ad free audio on every major podcasting app you get access to our Discord server, where you're going to have in game chats, you have merchandise drops. It's all in the everyday club. Locked on celtics.supercast.com it's five bucks a month, or if you want to pay for the whole year, it's 50 bucks. So you save yourself a couple of months there. Check it out. Lockdown, Celtics, Supercast. So this was a game where the Celtics were just constantly searching, searching for their offense. Nothing was working. But eventually you, you would hope that with a team this, you know, with this much offense, they can figure it out. So early on, Imit, Keita was, was keeping things alive with his rebound. He had six offensive rebounds, 13 overall. Thirteen points, 13 rebounds for him. A nice game for Keda, by the way. Side note at the end of the game, this crazy, like, power dribble drive from the right corner where he went up and it looked like he was going to try to dunk. And then he flipped it around and had a little finger roll. That was nice. Kate is like pulling out these little moves here and there that aren't bad. But his offensive rebounding kind of kept things alive. And then it wasn't until the second quarter where Peyton Pritchard finally hits the shot. He hits the shot that he's been looking for. And it was a buzzer beater from the left, the left kind of hash mark, if you're watching on YouTube, like way down there by the Bulls bench, he hits the shot he, he'd been taking. So obviously we know the, the buzzer beaters. Like, that's the Peyton Pritchard thing. You know, the one in the finals, he had like three or four of them that were just crazy. And then it became a thing for Pritchard. Everybody's like, every time he gets the ball at the end of a quarter, it's like, oh, he loves these. And you know, he'd miss a few because they're, they're tough to hit. You don't hit those very often. So he went on a little stretch where he just didn't hit him this time. He got it. He got to his spot. He hits the shot. He turns like, he turns around. He just starts like smirking and nodding. And I was like, okay, he, he feels something. I, I knew at that point, like, that's the level of confidence. I, I knew he was going to come out and start shooting. Well, at one point in the third quarter, I was like, just, everybody get out of the way. Just, just let Pritchard shoot. He's the only guy that was hitting just let him keep shooting. He parlayed that make into 11 third quarter points. He kind of started the third quarter hot and then, then at that point, he kind of passes the baton relay style to Anthony Simons, who gets going. And Simons in the second half, from basically the second half of the third quarter through the fourth quarter, when we talk about Inferno, like, that was absolute volcanic heater from simons. He was 8 of 11 from 3 in the second half. He scored 27 points all in the second half. Like 27 points in a second. Jalen scored 30 in the second half of the, the Clippers game. Simons was on that kind of just heater where if, if that, if you can carry that over, you know, that was a 50. What's that? A 54 point pace. Now, he did it a lot differently. Obviously. Jalen was doing it, you know, with all sorts of shots. Simons was just unconscious from three. But that's the type of thing, like when you have a guy like him, you just keep working, keep getting those good shots. Which is why every time Joe Mazzulla was asked about something offensive, he was like, no, I go back to the offensive rebounding, the defense, and that's what allowed us to get to that point. He wouldn't let anybody just talk about the offense without saying if was the offensive rebound in the defense that got us to that point. And, and he's true. And it's true. And you know, Simons gets two offensive rebounds in this game, which doesn't sound like a lot, but he had 14 coming in, so it's like 14% of his entire offensive rebounding, you know, workload from the season in, in this one game. So him getting the two. And I think you can take a lot of positives from the Simons performance here because it tells you two things. Number one, him doing those little things, getting in there, getting the offensive rebounds. He talked about how important he was always the first guy back. Now he's spending time in the corners and he's crashing to the nail, which is a point in the middle of the, the free throw line. If you don't know why it's called the nail. It used to literally be a nail where they would measure out all the measurements on the court, but it still remains called the nail. But basically that free throw line area, the elbows somewhere in there. We were talking about it pre game with Billy Donovan. He was talking about how the Celtics do a great job crashing to the elbow area. The long rebounds tend to go There last year, the Celtics had kind of tape marks at the practice facility with lines to that area, kind of showing people the path, the players the path to take to offensive rebound. This is something new for Simons that he's learning and he's kind of getting a grasp of. So to see him getting in there and getting offensive rebounds, you're like, okay, he's starting to understand this is how we crash. This is where we crash to. It's not just corner crash, driving down, you know, diving through the baseline and trying to get in and sneak in. For offensive rebounds, you got guys shooting. The Celtics take a majority, an overwhelming majority of their shots from above the break, which means rebounds tend to go long. So if the shot goes long, it's going to bounce all the way out to that free throw line. When you're a rebounder, you think shots are, oh, generally going to go long. So you think about the angle. If someone's shooting a 45 degree, you know, 45 degrees from the hoop, you got to go 45 degrees the other way, kind of get to that spot, and you're going to generally get yourself a little bit more in position to rebound. So you always assume a shot's going to go long, and even if it goes short and it front rims, you're kind of getting the same kind of bounce on these long, long shots, long three pointers. So it gets hammered home on somebody like Simons. Don't just run back, get to that spot. And the beauty of that is when you get to that spot and the rebound's not there, you just keep on running and you end up getting back on defense anyway. So the Celtics philosophy of offensive rebounding really pays off. And for Simons to pick that up, very encouraging. Also, for Simons to get hot off the bench continues to be encouraging. I continue to believe that the Celtics. One very viable result for Anthony Simons and the Celtics this year is that he stays at the deadline. Now, I don't know what's going to happen. Trey Young is officially working with the Hawks to work a trade out of Atlanta. So that means he's probably gone by the deadline. This is not going to be the time for me to take my Trey Young sucks victory lap. But that's coming soon again. I mean, it's a regular thing for me. But anyway, you don't know if, like, anytime a guy like Trey Young's gonna get traded with all of his salary, teams will look to Boston and Anthony Simons to see if the Celtics can use that contract to Facilitate a deal. All right, but if they don't have, they don't have to do that. And if they can't get anybody good in return, they won't do that. Simon's sticking around, negotiating an actual contract with the Celtics. If you miss my, my podcast with Keith Smith, the spot track. There was a bonus podcast that was released more recently, audio wise, but it's back on the, on the YouTube page from a few weeks ago. There is. It makes perfect sense to me to, to sign him to a mid level deal. You can still trade him. Teams can now absorb players in mid level using their mid level exception, so there's still a possibility that Simons could get traded down the road. You're not stuck in case something better comes along or a better fit comes along. But keeping Simons in a six man role at a mid level deal into next season with Jalen and Jason and who knows where, however, however else they remake the roster makes sense. You get a big scoring punch. The more comfortable he is, the more comfortable he gets. The, the more performances he puts out like this off the bench, the more that makes a whole lot of sense for the Celtics. Keep him, keep this type of explosive score on the bench and move forward and see, right? So I think there's a game like this for Simons, you know, mixed into how crappy this game was is a lot of encouraging stuff. You say, okay, he's still more comfortable, he's getting there. He, he's figuring it off the bench. He's figuring out the philosophical stuff. He's defending at a better, a higher level. He, he's picking things up. And maybe, you know, look, it's, it's only early January. This is the January 6 episode. You had to give him some time to pick some of this stuff up, especially for a guy who was never, who never had to be at any kind of defender or any kind of rebounder. So this is about the time this makes sense. It's about right for him to start figuring this stuff out and showing it. So that, that was good. All right, so now the Celtics have won, the Knicks have lost. The Celtics are in second in the East. What does that actually mean? We'll talk about that when I come back. Today's show is brought to you by. Game time. You know, there's nothing like being in this building. And okay, now the energy wasn't right there at the beginning, but it did show up at the end. The crowd when there's that big run that gets everybody on their feet. It is actually kind of fun and fans. You want to be here for these moments, not stuck refreshing screens or guessing what tickets are really going to cost. That's where Game Time comes in. Game Time gives you the advantage back, making it incredibly easy to score amazing tickets. It's fast, simple and no guesswork. Because browsing the Game Time app is straightforward, it's intuitive. You find tickets in just a few taps. You see the view from your seat before buying. It makes choosing tickets easy and confident. I've used the Game Time app plenty. I like using it on the road sometimes. We're in cities where other sporting events are going on. You know, a hockey game, a baseball game, a WNBA game, whatever. So I've seen it, I've used it. The view from your seat thing is great. The prices, the fees are all up front, so I know what I'm paying right ahead of time. There are zone deals that help you unlock great seats at an even better value. So whatever it is a game, another event, a concert, or whatever, it's all right there. Take the guesswork out of buying tickets with Game Time. Download the Game Time app, create an account. Use the code Locked on NBA that's Locked on NBA L O C K E d locked on NBA for 20 off your first purchase. Download the GameTime app today and get in on the action.
- [23:57]
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- [24:36]
John Corrales
Thanks for making Lockdown Celtics your first listen every day. Go check out Lockdown NBA Lockdown NBA Game Night two podcasts on one feed. Game Night is seven days a week covering every game in the league. So you want to get caught up on everything that happened after watching the Celtics game. That's your podcast. And then in the afternoons Lockdown NBA has you covered all the big storylines. Lots of Trae Young discussion going on there on the next podcast for sure. So go check that out. Where have you found this podcast? Whether you're watching or listening, so the Celtics are now the 2 seed. They have jumped past the Knicks and in you know, does it matter? Does it matter right now on January 6th? No, not necessarily. We asked Peyton Pritchard about it after the game. He's like, look, have we even played 40 games? The answer is no. They're at 35 games at this point. So no, you haven't gotten through halfway through the season. There's way too much basketball left to be played. So we can't sit there and say, oh, wow, this, this is very, very meaningful. However, look, I picked the Celtics to win 44 games this year and they're on a 50, like 54 win pace now. So they're a little bit ahead of my prediction. And, and that's totally fine. I'd rather be wrong that way than wrong the other way. I still, I still think that there's going to be a point here where maybe they lose a few in a row, but what they've done is given themselves a lot of pad. So they're still in really great shape. They've, they've won now 23. They're 23 and 12. The Knicks are 23 and 13 after losing to the Pistons. The Celtics are now three and a half games out of first and they've got games coming up against the Pistons. So it's, it's not inconceivable that the Celtics can kind of make a run at the top seed at some point. Now that is shocking to say and I am laughing as I say it because I don't expect it. But look, they got the Nuggets coming up on Wednesday. They don't have Jokic, but they're getting players back and they're still scrappy, they're still good. The Raptors are always a pain. The spurs coming in on Saturday on a back to back in third game in four nights, that's going to be tough. Then you're back on the road. Indy, Miami, Atlanta, Detroit, winnable games, all of them except for Detroit. That's going to be a tough one. But there are games here to win and I don't know, are they going to make a run at that top seed legitimately, I can't say. I can't say no for sure because I didn't think they would be here in the two seed. Just being here, just having this conversation is a huge win for them, whether they hit a rough patch or not. This is a team that very few people thought, actually thought. Maybe you had faith, maybe you believed, but rational thought. To sit there and be like this team without Tatum losing all the players that they lost to sit there and say they'd be 23 and 12 and the second seed at this point. Not, not a lot of people really thought that. I think what this does is it really solidifies their, their, their playoff positioning. They have a real chance to, to be a home court team in the first round, which is nothing that we expected. And you know, look, there, a lot can happen. We don't know what the Orlando Magic are going to be. The Philadelphia 76ers are still being talked about in glowing terms around the league because they have potential and we don't know what they're going to end up being. But just want to give the Celtics the credit for becoming this and, and coming together so soon. I just talked all, you know, all that bit about Anthony Simons getting it together, but you look at guys, the fringe guys, the Jordan Walshes who has slipped out of the starting lineup but still comes in and makes some, you know, positive impact. Baylor Scheireman finds a way to make an impact. Hugo Gonzalez finds a way to make an impact. And if it doesn't happen every game, it doesn't, that's fine. But they are not discouraged. This team doesn't get like, discouraged by slow, like a slow start. Oh, and three start. They don't get discouraged by a bad performance, a bad quarter, bad half, maybe a bad game. They, they just keep coming back and keep, they keep pushing and, and no matter where this season ends up going, I think this is something that this is, we're going to look at this as a, a really huge success. And as I said in yesterday's show, you know, look, I, I, I don't know, I don't know what to make of what this team will be in the playoffs because I don't think they have the variety of things that they can do to lean on, you know, in, in a playoff series where I think the, the reason why playoffs kind of weed out some, some teams is like you have set, you have seven games to game plan and, and come up with, you know, a, B, C, D. And I don't know if the Celtics will have abcd, but a lot of people didn't think they would have A, and they have A and B now. And so can they get to the other things? Do they have the personnel? Do they have the talent? Do they have that we're gonna have to wait and see. But however it goes, whatever it is, like this is already a major success. Already a major success because we've seen, we've seen the coaching has, has gotten these guys to an Incredible level. We've seen Jalen, you know, so what, he had a bad game. This is, this just goes down as a bad game. But he still did the other things. And he. The one thing I'll say about Jalen in this game, and this kind of goes to my point that I'm making here, at no point did I think Jalen was trying to dominate this game. He took 24 shots and he was pressing a little bit. But I never thought like, okay, Jalen feels the need to take over. He, he had little stretches, but he never said, it's my time, I have to find my offense. At the expense of everything else. No, he just played his normal game, shots didn't fall. He never really let it, let it get to him. And I thought, I thought that that's as meaningful as some of the things he did in the 50 point win a 50 point game. Because it's not just about how many times does the ball go through the hoop. It's how it is your process. And the Celtics process has been great. The process has been great. So the second seed at this point, it's not the, I'm not just looking at it like, hey, great, they're in second. It's more what it symbolizes. It's more that it symbolizes. These guys are, they've, they've, they've been together. They've never let any, any of the negativity, any, any negative stretches get to them. They've never let, individually, they've never let starting, not starting, losing a starting job, you know, interfere with anything. Their attitudes are all still the same. They're all still together and the result is right now, positive wins. You're seeing tangible results, which is important. So I don't know. This is predicting this team at this point. Hard to say. They could, they could win, they could win 54 games. They, they could end up hitting a skid and being a 45 win team. Don't know, don't care. I don't care. I just don't care. I'm, I'm already happy with. Like, to me, this season is already a success and it's proven a lot. A lot of people who had doubts about certain players, the coach, all of that. It's, it's already, I've. All of that stuff has been answered to me. So everything that happens from now on is just fun, gravy. Enjoy it. Big playoff run, no playoff run. Who cares? They've got. Because I think they're, they are in a great place to carry this into next season where next season is the season to care about. So. But let me know, let me know what you think, what you take from this game. Obviously in the comments section. Share your thoughts with me. Always love to hear them. Even if you disagree with me, I still love to hear them. So do that. I would love to hear your opinion. I'd love to have you share the podcast as well. Please spread the word. Tell everybody they should be listening to and watching the Lockdown Celtics podcast here on the Lockdown Podcast Network. It's your team every day, New year, same extra value meals at McDonald's. So now get two snack wraps plus fries and a medium soft drink for just $8 for a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and Caribbe, California. And for delivery.