← Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
Jayson Tatum STUNS Boston Celtics Fans With STRONG Comeback Performance in BLOWOUT Win
00:28:47
Jayson Tatum returns to the Boston Celtics lineup, shaking off early rust to energize TD Garden and spark a dominant 120-100 win over the Dallas Mavericks. Can Tatum’s promising performance after a lengthy Achilles injury propel the Celtics through the playoff stretch? John Karalis of Celtics On SI breaks down Tatum’s 15-point, 12-rebound, 7-assist night, highlighting his chemistry with Jaylen Brown, impact on team dynamics, and the electric atmosphere fueled by local prospect Cooper Flagg’s appearance. The discussion spotlights Jaylen Brown’s all-around game, Derrick White’s elite defense, and Payton Pritchard’s key contributions off the bench. Karalis analyzes Joe Mazzulla’s rotation strategy, the Celtics’ crucial offensive rebound surge, and takeaways from Boston’s strong finishing stretches. With Tatum exceeding expectations in his return, how high is Boston’s ceiling heading into the postseason? Don’t miss this insightful recap and what it means for the Celtics’ championship ...
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now on the Locked on Celtics podcast, Jason Tatum came back. He looked eh. And then he looked great. And oh yeah, they won a basketball game. Welcome back to the Lockdown Celtics podcast right here on the Lockdown podcast network to your team every day. Your team's the Boston Celtics and I talk about them Monday through Friday. Plus bonus podcast like this one here from TD Garden. I'm up in the rafters. Just a little different background for you, but I'm here. I'm at TD Garden after the Boston Celtics 12100 win over the Dallas Mavericks. The game was secondary. Oh yeah, Cooper flag was here. Like that was maybe the third or fourth biggest storyline in this game. So I'll be talking about all that stuff. So thank you for subscribing the shows on YouTube, shows everywhere. I'm John Corrales. I've been covering this team for about 20 years. Doing it right now for Sports Illustrated Celtics on si and I've been covering, I've been doing this podcast for 10 years. So you know, been around the team for a while. Today's show is brought to you by FanDuel. College basketball is non stop. Big games, tight spreads, momentum swings every single night. From early tip offs to late night west coast shootouts, there's always action on the board. FanDuel is giving you a way to turn that energy into bigger potential wins. With college basketball parlay profit boost. You can build any college hoops parlay that you want. You can mix spreads, totals, player props and match how you See the slate map playing out. Then you can apply the profit boost and instantly bump up the potential payout. So go safe. Go bold. Ride with the team that you've been following all season. It's your parlay. It's your style. It's all up to you. And now there's more upside behind it. Head to FanDuel.com to get started. That's FanDuel.com when you sign up, they will ask you to set a limit, set your budget, whatever you can afford to lose. In case you go cold, that's what you set your budget at. So do that@fanduel.com, gamble responsibly at FanDuel. Play your game. All right, so the Celtics get the. The win here. I'll talk about that more in the second segment. Just the game. I'm going to do two segments here because there's. I'm not. I don't want to go breaking down this game too much because the really, the only thing to break down here is Jason Tatum's return. 15 points, 12 rebounds, seven assists. He missed his first few shots. We missed four in a row, five in a row, six in a row. Let. Let's. Let's rewind it, though. Let's rewind. The atmosphere here was kind of crazy. This was. I had multiple people telling me this felt like. Like almost. Almost a version of the game, an NBA Finals game. It wasn't. It was more than a playoff atmosphere. It was. It was something bigger. It was something. Yeah, obviously you had a bunch of different elements here. You had Cooper Flag coming back. I saw a lot of Cooper Flag jerseys around, and when they introduced him, there was a big pop. Obviously, he's a local kid. People came down to see him. There are a lot of people from Maine here, Celtics fans wearing Mavericks Cooper flag jerseys. So we had that dynamic. Obviously, Tatum was coming back. Seven o' clock start. No empty seats to start. The Garden is good. This is not like It's Miami, where 7 o' clock start, the lower bowl is not going to fill up till 7:45. There's. The crowd is usually here, but 7:00 clock Friday night, people might still be getting their checks over across at the Harp or whatever. And to. To be here and in your seat right at the beginning, there might be some late stragglers. When we were standing up for the national anthem, I looked around. I always like to look around at the crowd, and I don't think there was a single empty seat. So there was anticipation. Jason came out for warm Ups. And it was, you know, the, the dj, they played like an entrance music. Everybody gathered around. He came out to this big crowd and applause. And it, it just, it was obviously a very different kind of thing. You could tell that he was a little anxious. He said he was a little anxious, a little nervous. But, you know, at that point, a lot of the things that we expected kind of happened. He was a little off. The shot was a little off. He passed a lot. He, you know, he looked like a guy that was working himself back in. But at the same time, a lot of things happened that I didn't expect. Number one, he played 27 minutes and I didn't expect that at all. I was expecting, obviously, I, I've been on the podcast saying, bring him in off the bench, give him, you know, seven eight minute stints, that's 15, 16, 17 minutes and be done with it. So he comes in, he plays, he starts, which is totally fine because he started and played 27 minutes. And right away that tells me that he has been, he is, he's been doing a lot more work behind the scenes than we really understood. The, the, the whole. We took the scrimmage with Maine, I think to, to be like, well, this is his first scrimmage and I don't think it was now. I think that he has been doing a lot more work with the team. I think whatever they let on, there was much more behind the scenes. He clearly was gassed at points. The, the, the dunk attempt where he kind of, he got blocked by the rim. That I think was a result of some heavy legs. It was, I think, towards the end of a stint and he thought he had more. He wouldn't have tried the dunk if he didn't think he had the explosion. I think on his way up, he might have been like, oh, he still tried the dunk. And it, you know, whatever that happens, like, that's the. I do not care about that play at all. Heavy legs, whether it's, you know, a little bit of fatigue from his first game in 300 days, practically being out for 10 months, none of the missed shots or any of that stuff mattered to me at all. But the 27 minutes, the starting and playing, 6 minute stints. So you had like 6, 12, 18, 24, and then a little 3 minutes. Then at the end of the second quarter that I, I just believe that he's, the progress that he had made was much more significant heading in to this game. There's a reason why I and others were saying 15 to 20 minutes, tops, because we didn't realize the extent of what he had been, where he had gotten to. Right. I thought he was here, and he ended up being here. He still needs to get up here. And, you know, if you're not watching, you know, I just made a little thing with my hands about like lower, higher, higher than that thing. I think you could judge that from the tone of my voice. But I, I, I didn't expect him to be as far up as he was. So great. That's great. This is all great. I would rather a million times out of a million be wrong in this manner where I underestimated something and be wrong because it's much better. Like even in the Mishkeda stuff, for example, I'll, I'll, I do that all over again. You know, I'd rather undersell something and have it be a much like a pleasant surprise than to be out here being like, he's going to play 30 minutes and score 30 points and then he plays 25 minutes and scores 15. You're like, well, it wasn't as good as you were saying. I would, I would much rather go low and exceed that expectation. So Tatum exceeded the expectation as far as minutes. The I thought right away, you know, he had a nice alley oop to Namish Kyle early on for his first, basically the first touch of the game moved the ball well. I think he was seeing the floor well. The chemistry was there, you know, a little off, but still there. He and Jalen are figuring things out. There was one play, Jalen. I popped onto Jalen's twitch stream just to see and like, see what he had been saying. And, you know, he's talking about adjusting his game a little bit to be a little bit more of a catch and shoot guy. Now that Jason is back, Jalen doesn't have to be as much on ball, which is great. This is all great stuff. And just like Jason won't have to be on ball as much. He can be a catch and shoot guy sometimes too, because Jalen has gotten so good on the ball. So there's adjustment period for, for both of these guys, which I think ultimately will be a very good thing. The adjusting in that way is much better than adjusting in, you know, a different way. Which side note, they lost Nicola Vucevic, a fracture in his right ring finger, so he's gonna have surgery on that and miss up to a month. It seems like, according to Sham Sharania, that surgery is going to be done this weekend. So there's adjustments that are Gonna have to be done now on both sides. And you know that that kind of sucks that that's gonna hurt their chances. I think just from Jason, this was the opportunity for Jason to get the opportunities with Vuch, to get some, some reps with Vuch. And I thought that was a pairing that was gonna work together. Now we'll never see whether Vuch was going to start or not start or anything like that. This is just going to be namish K to starting. And that might have been how it goes, how it went anyway. But anyway, that's a side note. Jason after like that last stretch in the second quarter, that, that kind of settled him down, he got up for that back dunk and they immediately came down. So he gets the put back dunk. They go down score. Derrick White does a great job of getting the ball in bounds right away running down the floor. Jason gets open in the left corner and hits that corner. Three point, a little sidestep corner three. And this place was as loud as I've heard this. It has never been louder than this. It was NBA Finals loud. It was Peyton Pritchard hitting that buzzer beater loud. That's how crazy it was in here. So he, he hits those two shots. The crowd was just itching, right? He, he had that, that missed dunk and the crowd, ah, and he missed it and it's ah, deflating. They were, they wanted so badly to cheer for him and you know, the intro was great. All of every, all the ceremony, everything was great. And finally he breaks through, gets that, gets that put back dunk, gets the three pointer and now he hits four or five shots in a row and it, it settles into a very nice night for him. You know, if you just take his second half overall it was a nice, a nice night, right? 15 points, 12 rebounds, 6 of 16 shooting and 3 of 8 from 3 is, is, is good. Seven assists, a couple of turnovers and a steal. Not bad. I would have been happy with his second half, which was, let's see, the second half numbers for Jason Tatum were 13 minutes, 4 of 8 shooting, 2 of 4 from 3, 10 points, 7 rebounds, 2 assists and a plus 15. If you had just given us that, that 13 minutes would have been perfect. But the game, the game that he, he gave us was for first game back after 10 months, coming off of the Achilles. Couldn't ask for anything more. It was equal parts, you know, Rusty, but playing through it, getting past it, you are pushing his lung capacity, which you wanted him to be tired. You wanted him to Be breathing hard. That's going to increase the lung capacity. Joe Missoula said it after the game. You can't simulate a lot of this stuff, can't simulate this cardio that he's getting in the game. So this is all great stuff. Everything, forget the scoring, forget anything. Just him going out there and playing as much as he did is great. I'll save it for the next podcast, but I'll just say this. If this is the starting point for Tatum, I feel really good about what he's going to bring to this team. There was always a question mark here about what's Tatum going to be for the Celtics, what's he. How good is he going to be? What percentage of Tatum are they going to get? Is it going to be 75? Is it going to be 80? Is it going to be 90? I feel good that Tatum is going to be a. A reasonable version of himself. Will he get to be 100% of himself by some point in the playoffs? I'm not going to say no, because I'm not gonna. I'm just not gonna say no to anything with this team anymore. I can't. I can't say something is not going to happen because they always prove you wrong. It's unlikely to happen. But whatever version of Tatum you get, whatever percentage, this is the starting point. This version of Jason Tatum would help the Celtics in the playoffs. This version tonight, the first game back, this version helps the Boston Celtics now give him six weeks of games. 18, 19 more games, whatever it is. I. I don't know what his. The plan is for Sunday. I wouldn't expect him to play, but maybe he will. I don't know. I think he's going to miss some games here and there. I don't think he's going to play back to backs, so he will miss more time moving forward. But whatever amount of games it's going to be, each game, he's going to build on it. Maybe the game won't look as good as the last one. Maybe it'll look better, maybe it'll look worse. But each game is an opportunity to build on that recovery, build on that rehab. So super, super encouraging return for Jason Tatum. I cannot. I can't find, like, I want to be fair, I want to be reasonable. I want to look at all the. All of the. The potential angles here. I can't see a negative in. There's not. He looked good. He. This was. This was as encouraging as you can expect. I'm. Can't say enough about what Tatum was in this game. It was a game, by the way. It's like the result of the game was secondary. The Celtics won and other guys played great in this game. Let's just quickly do that when I come back. Today's game. Today's Today's game. Today's podcast. Today's show is brought to you by Five Hour Energy. It's the flavor draft. At Five Hour Energy, we're going to do 18 different flavors to choose from. New options like confetti craze, free rainbow cotton candy. There's something for everyone. Board is set. The flavors are ready. My number one pick in the five Hour Energy flavor draft. I'm sticking, I'm sticking to my. I like the fruity flavors. I like. I've been going between grape and berry. I like the berry flavor. But listen, you got something for everybody. Are you like a sweet tooth? Confetti craze is sweet. Not overly sweet, but sweet, rich, indulgent sweetness from start to finish. No sugar. That's the key thing here. This is five Hour Energy. 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Indeed, you're hiring, but you've also got deadlines. You've got a stack of things in your inbox. It's just too much going on. But you still need to fill that job. And you're not just going to sit there and hope that somebody comes in. Just like Brad Stevens doesn't hope that somebody shows up out of nowhere and can help Fill a gap on his team. He's got scouts, he's got people giving him the players that check off all the boxes. Your version of that is Indeed Sponsored Jobs. They will help you reach the people that actually fit where you're looking for the skills, the experience, location. So they check off all your boxes and they can help you fill that spot quicker than just hoping. We're talking for about a minute here. 27 hires will be made by companies like yours on Indeed Worldwide according to Indeed data. So spend less time searching, spend more time actually interviewing the candidates who check off all of those boxes. Take away the stress, take away the time, take away all of that that stuff that you hate about hiring and get the job done. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, you'll get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your job the premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com podcast Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions apply. Need a hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Thank you for making Lockdown Celtics your first listen every day as I'm here at TD Garden so there's might be background noise if you hear it. That's the crews kind of changing things over the the ice is down. I'm looking this way in the rafters like I'm at eye level with the 1966 championship banner over there. They've got the ice down for the Bruins but I'm up here talking to you about the Celtics. Thank you for making the show you first listen every day. You're in every day or join the everydayer club. 5 bucks a month, 50 bucks for the year. You'll get access to ad free audio which is auto. It's available at all of the major podcasting app. You can get onto our Discord server with live game chats, Celtics and NBA chats. So check that out. Lockdown celtics.supercast.com so there was a game. The Celtics won it by 20. They were the shooting was awful in the first quarter. Both teams were in 20% range for a long time. The Celtics recovered after a while we'll say the the recovery after the Hornets loss they, they got in there. They, they were rebounding better. They, they grabbed a ton of offensive rebounds. They did a good job with that so they stuck with it and were able to kind of the, the, the shooting recovered and they, they figured it out and part of that is because all of the big name guys that had big time games right Jaylen Brown had a 24.7 rebound, sent seven assist game two steals plus 20. He was 9:17 from the field. 2 of 5 from 3, 4 of 6 from 1. Just an overall. Three offensive rebounds overall, just really good. It's going to be an underrated game. People aren't going to talk about Jalen's game in this one probably very much because of all the other stuff that was happening. But Jalen had a really good game and kind of carried the scoring for a little bit. Each one of these guys had a moment, right, that they carried the scoring. Even Jason carried it for a little bit. Derrick White had a great game. 20 points on 8 of 16. Shooting was a little bit cold from 3, but 2 of 2 from the line. He had four assists. He had four rebounds, two steals, two blocks. The best defensive guard in the league. I don't care who you. Who you name. Derrick White is better and he had stretches there. We just quick hands, you know, getting steals. Just. He's just so smooth. You. You. I don't know. I'm. I'm going to stop because it just becomes gushing at this point. But Derek, Derek was great. Peyton was good off the. Off the bench. 19 points, 8 of 17 shooting, but also seven rebounds, six assists. He got two blocks. So those blocks tend to be when a guy is dribbling and he gathers and just like as he's bringing the ball up, you swipe down at it. That because. Because it's the gather and you're going up that counts as the beginning of a shot. Those become blocks. I think they should be steals. I think a block shot should be at the top of the. The. The shot. But whatever. This. This is the. What the. The rules are. And so Peyton gets a couple of blocks. Good for him. The Mishkeda was. Was great. 15 points. I'm sorry. 16 points, 15 rebounds. A block, a steal. Running the pick and roll to get that early lob with. With Jason. It's just a. A great overall game for. For Neemi. Look, the Celtics played, you know, they were. They were kind of cold. They made their run at the end of the second quarter. They made a run at the end of the third quarter. Closing out quarters strong is a big, big focus for Joe Missoula. And they did that at the end of the second into the third, and then they put the game away at the beginning of the fourth. At one point it was. See, it was a 14 to 5 run to end the third quarter. And then I saw 20 to 7 to start the. The. The fourth. So what's that? 3412 is the run that put this game away. That's how you're supposed to do it. You end quarters well, you start the next quarter well, and you build up a big lead. And the Mavs are just. Aren't. Just aren't good enough. This. Is this what they want. This is the result that they want in Dallas. It's great. Cooper flag was, you know, fine in this game. Did not shoot particularly well. Where was he? Seven of 23. That does not. That counts as not shooting particularly well. 16 points, eight rebounds, six assists. He had a few turnovers, so, you know, an okay night. Back home in his home crowd. In front of his home crowd. Hometown crowd, I suppose I should say not the home, because his home crowd is Dallas. He's a Dallas Maverick. For now, anyway. So that's it. Not much to say about the game. The. The story of this is more about Tatum, who I just am impressed. Impressed by him, impressed by where he is and incredibly encouraged. Just incredibly encouraged for what he's going to be moving forward. I just think he looks good. He kind of looks like himself. And as he gets that wind back and gets his legs back and figures some things out, he will just slowly work his way back into the mix. I don't know what this team ceiling is, but I can't put a limitation on it. If this is the Jason Tatum, like I said before, if this is the starting point for Jason Tatum, what's the ending point this season? I'm. There's. There's no. Other than his shot was a little bit off, a lot of bit off at the beginning of this, and he looked tired. Other than that, I thought he looked good. Like, there was a couple of times where, you know, he. Cooper, went up with a, you know, for a shot, and Jason kind of like, what's really missing from Jason is the quick. The quick burst, right? That. That quick jump, the second jump. That stuff isn't there yet. He even said after the game, I got a long way to go, which is true. Well, he. He's. I thought to put a number on it, I'd say he's probably 70 of what, 75 of what he's going to be. So that's further along than I thought. So we'll see about Sunday. It's a Sunday afternoon game. I don't know. I don't. Listen, I'm not a doctor, so I'm just guessing. I'm guessing based on my own experience from playing and, you know, being around basketball for, you know, as long as I've been around, I would think that that's going to be a game that they will avoid, an afternoon game. Plus the, the time change, spring ahead. It's going to be, it's, it's too close. It's not a back to back, but it's very close. And I just don't know if he's going to be fully recovered. I don't think you want to push it too much too fast. So you got to let him fully recover, which means he'll probably be back for the San Antonio game and then we'll see moving forward. It's an every other day kind of cadence. And will he be ready for every other day at that point? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe. Maybe the San Antonio game will be a bigger minutes thing and then OKC will be a shorter minutes thing. You know, it's like the concept behind a recovery run. You run, you do a big long run one day and then the next day you do like a little short, two, three miles just so your legs keep moving. So that could be a part of the plan too, right? Like, you don't want the atrophy. You don't, you don't want the lactic acid to build up. You don't want. Atrophy wasn't the right word, but you don't want the, you don't want it to stiffen up. You want the next day. Like tomorrow, Jason will do some light stuff just to keep the muscles moving so you kind of combat the soreness. Sunday, he might just go through a little workout if he doesn't play, just to kind of keep things up. But just expect him to miss a couple of games here or there. But I'll just end it by repeating myself. I'm super encouraged. Great. It's great. Everything positive. Everything positive from this game. Everything came up Milhouse in this game. Thanks for listening here. Thanks for watching. It's a bonus podcast. I do these bonus podcasts when they play on the weekends, so make sure you're subscribed. Bonus podcasts during the week. This point I'm doing. I'm not doing five podcasts a week. I'm probably doing closer to 8, 9, 10. So plenty of Celtics talk here. If you're new to the show. Thank you for being a subscriber. Or maybe you should be a subscriber if you're a regular and every dayer with me through all of these shows. Thank you so, so much for everything. And now I would love it if you shared the podcast and 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
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