← Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
Payton Pritchard IGNITES Boston Celtics, Backups to DOMINATE Without Jaylen Brown
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Boston Celtics showcase unparalleled depth as Payton Pritchard explodes for 33 points, 7 rebounds, and 10 assists in a decisive win over the Toronto Raptors. Can Joe Mazzulla’s ever-adapting lineups keep surprising the league? Luka Garza and Hugo Gonzalez deliver historic double-doubles off the bench, while Derrick White and Sam Hauser step up in crucial moments—proving no one can be counted out this season. John Karalis of Boston Sports Journal analyzes Mazzulla’s coaching innovations, including unexpected rotations and bold substitutions that fuel game-changing momentum swings. Key discussion points highlight Boston’s defensive tactics, contributions from Baylor Scheierman, and the evolving roles of Jordan Walsh and Josh Minott. With the Celtics now alone in third place and every roster spot in play, the upcoming matchup against Indiana looms large. Can Boston’s unpredictability power a sustained run to the top of the Eastern Conference?
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Inspires New Balance Hoops is changing the game with a roster built for the future. Aaron Neesmith, Tyrese Maxey, Zach lavine, Cooper Flagg is the newest NBA draft pick and Cam Brink who's raising the bar for women's basketball. Whether it's the Hezilo V2 for quick cuts, the two way V5 for all around play, or the Kawai 4 for those who never stop climbing, New Balance Hoops makes shoes built for every player. Visit new balance.com basketball to explore more. Peyton Pritchard was awesome. Joe Missoula had a bunch of tricks up his sleeve, which means you can never count anybody out this season talking about it right now in a bonus Lockdown Celtics podcast, huh? Yep yep yep. Be town be ever ready. It's the seas. Who else could it be? What they gonna say now screaming like J.T. corralis recap the madness every game, every practice, prime time Depp and D White on the sideline Raining J's. How we started raising Bandits how we finish locked on Selfish Pot Home of the Winners podcast right here on the Lockdown Podcast Network. Where does your team every day your team is the Boston Celtics and I talk about them every Monday through Friday plus bonus podcast when they play on a Friday or Saturday night. This is my seventh podcast in a row. I'm going to do another six in a row. So 13 straight podcasts because I'm here for you on a daily basis so subscribe. Wherever you get your podcast, watch your show on YouTube. It's the number one Boston Celtics podcast on the number one sports podcast network. So that's always fun too. If you're new to the show, I'm John Corrales, beat writer for Boston Sports Journal. I've been doing a version of this job for about 20 years now, and I've been doing this podcast for 10. I've also written a couple of books about this team. Today's show is brought to you by fanduel. If you want to be right in the middle of the action this season, visit FanDuel.com to place your NFL Live bets all season long. Celtics get the back to back win wins over Miami now Toronto big win here pulling away in the fourth quarter. Big run in the fourth quarter. Beginning the run began at the end of the third quarter was a what, 80 run to to end the third quarter 22. Four run overall when you fold in the beginning of the fourth quarter. So the Celtics got the 16 point win. Later on I'll get into why you should never count anybody out. We'll talk a little bit about Joe Missoula as well and all the individuals, Luca Garza, Hugo Gonzalez, Peyton Pritchard. But I want to start with the the team effort. This was a true team win. You had contributions all over the place in this one. Obviously Peyton Pritchard is the star of the game, 33 points, 7 rebounds, 10 assists. But at different points of this game you had different guys making contributions. So you know Pritchard in the first quarter, then Luca Garza comes in the entire like a mass substitution where Garva, Garza, Gonzalez, Simons came in that lineup, did a really nice job. Garza got the Celtics a ton of offensive rebounds and all that stuff. He made a contribution. Gonzalez obviously made a contribution. Simons like I mentioned, even like Baylor Scheireman. Fourth quarter Baylor Shireman was misses badly on a three pointer, takes a five second violation and I'm like, I'm sitting there like you know what, maybe, maybe I'm kind of done with this. Maybe I'm kind of done waiting for Baylor Shireman to do something and then he immediately makes up for it. Makes two incredible defensive plays. One of those results in a fast break where he has like a no look pass over his shoulder to Hugo Gonzalez and I'm just like oh, all right. That's typical. Typical. So Scheireman has has a moment aside. The only people who didn't have moments in this game like Jordan Walsh didn't Did Josh Minot really have a moment necessarily? He didn't play a lot. Jordan Walsh didn't play in the second quarter, I mean the second half at all, which is interesting. But everyone else, Sam Houser had a couple of shots like he had a little, a little moment. You're like, oh, okay Sam. Sam's doing his thing. Nene was 7 for 7. I didn't particularly like his game, but he, early on he had a couple of nice moves and so he had a moment there. Pritchard's moments were multiple. Derrick White had his moment in the fourth quarter. Garza had his moment. All of these guys chipped in without Jaylen Brown on a back to back. Joe Missoula dipped deep into the bench. Would he play 10 guys overall? And this is what you need, this is what you need on a back to back without your star player going up against a team that's been, you know, surprising a little bit, maybe coming down to earth a little bit. But they're dealing with their own injuries. No Jakob Pearl, no RJ Barrett. The Celtics defense I thought was early on was doing what they normally do. They give up three pointers. The Celtics do allow a bunch of three pointers. That's what they over commits to, taking away the paint. The Raptors are not a team that takes a lot of threes. They averaged 32. They took 47 against the Celtics and the Celtics were fine with it because, you know, Sandro Mama, Kellogg, Villi was, you know, he took nine. You usually are okay with him taking nine, right? Ingram took seven and they, those guys hit nine combined. So they were nine of 16. The Raptors were bombing away early and it felt like, you know, this might be like a, a shooting variance game that would, that was going to hurt the Celtics. But ultimately they, you know, the, the Raptors cooled off, the defense did what it was supposed to do and if it wasn't for Peyton Pritchard, maybe things would have gone different. But Pritchard was, you know, really good to start the game. He came out, played well, even though the, the rest of the starters didn't do much. Pritchard was, you know, he had eight points in the, in the first quarter, kind of kept the Celtics afloat. The bench did their job. The bench came in and, and took a lead like they were, they were playing great. And then the starters came back in and everything fell apart again. So it was kind of a weird kind of flow of the game. But Pritchard got held things together early and then Pritchard Had a big third quarter as the rest of the starters, kind of like the Celtics were trying to figure out their way. They ended up winning the quarter by five, but again they went on an 80 run to end the quarter. So Pritchard had to like do a lot of legwork to keep the Celtics in this game. And it wasn't until the end of that, that third quarter, beginning of the fourth quarter where everything started to finally click and everything came together. But Pritchard was great. 19 points in that third, like I said, 33 points. But the 10 assists were huge. The seven, the seven rebounds were big. It wasn't just. And it wasn't just that. It was that his, his scoring came in the middle of the paint. Again, like it was such a weird game where the Raptors were hitting a bunch of threes and Pritchard was living in the paint. He scored eight of his 13 buckets came in the paint, which is incredible for Pritchard. But that, that's kind of where he likes to live. That drive step back. 13 footer is money for him. He finds his way to the rim, but also he's deadly from three. He, he had it going that, that behind the back. Like dribble like crazy, crazy in the middle of the lane, dump it off the Sam houser for the three pointer. Like Pritchard had everything working. He now averages 24 points on the back end of a back to back for the Celtics. Like sit Jalen Brown let Pritchard cook and these games because he's going to go out there and, and deliver. So a huge game for Pritchard to kind of pace the team in scoring. I, I don't know where to go next with the Garza Gonzalez thing because Garza came in in the first quarter like this is, this is Joe Missoula. Like he, Missoula pressed every button in this game. You go to Garza in the first quarter, out of nowhere, Luca Garza, sure, let's go with that. And it was just like offensive rebound, offensive rebound, offensive rebound, put back foul. Trying to get the offensive rebound. He had nine offensive rebounds and on top of that, I want to say three, four fouls that he drew going for the offensive rebounds, which gave the Celtics extra possessions. The record for offensive rebounds off the bench is 11. And if he didn't get fouled on a couple of these, he would have had that. But Garza comes in with a double double to really make a strong impact. Finished with 12 points, 10 rebounds again, nine of them offensive. He was a plus 22 for Joe to just decide out of nowhere, you know what this is? This feels like a Luca Garza thing. What a testament to Joe and a testament to Garza and a testament to all of these guys that they all know, okay, maybe I haven't played in a little while and like this happened with Tillman, you know, a few games ago. It'll happen with just about everybody. Maybe not Chris Boucher, they've tried that before and I don't know how that's going to go, but hell, maybe it will happen with Chris Boucher. Joe just keeps pressing these buttons and Ugo comes in and sure, I mean, I'm sorry, Luca comes in like, sure, let's just go nuts, file, you know, offensive rebounds and let's, let's just. The energy helped the, that first unit help that second unit in the first quarter, really turn the game around. Like Garza turns this entire game around with his offensive rebounding. And then there's Zugo. Gonzalez, who was incredible, followed up a, you know, nearly 30 minute game with a another almost the same amount of time, 20, almost 28 minutes in this game. The energy for him. He had a double. Double Celtics had. I love this stat. You're, you're never going to guess if you haven't seen it. I'll tell you this. Ugo and Luca are the first Celtics to have double doubles off the bench since 2016. If you're in a place to Google it, don't see if you can get it. I'm going to take a break. You have like two minutes to see. I if you can think of it, 2016 was the last time two Celtics off the bench had double doubles. I'll answer that trivia question and get to the rest of the show when I come back. Today's show is brought to you by Robin Hood. No one knows your money goals better than you. Robinhood puts you in control of your money with tools that work as hard as you do, locking in on every opening, beating your pr, beating it again. Channel that drive into your money. 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Peyton Pritchard gets hot. Gonzalez comes in. Luca Garza comes in. So whenever one of these guys comes in for a momentum swing, you can get in on the live betting Player props update. As guys heat up live spreads, money lines adjust instantly. If you want to bet on football, you can bet on the next touchdown score. Drive results and more. Keeps you locked in into every snap, every drive, every possibility. So if you want to be in the middle of the action this season, visit FanDuel.com place your live bets all season long. FanDuel. The game moves fast. So can you. Thanks for making a lockdown celtics. Your first listen. Every day you're an everydayer now. You can level up and check out the new every dare club. You get access to the ad free version of our audio feed. So you can eliminate the ads. Just five bucks a month, 50 bucks for the year. You also get access to our every dare club discord server. You get merch, access to merch and all that stuff. So check it out at locked on celtics.supercast.com Locked on celtics.supercast.com or you can go to lockdownpodcast.com everyday or to find all of the shows where you can become a member of the everydayer club. So check it out wherever you. I'm sorry, check it out@lockdown celtics.supercast.com all right, let's move on here because. Okay, the answer to the trivia question is in 2016, Evan Turner and Tyler Zeller both had double doubles off the bench. So if you got that, I mean, honor system shout out to you, you, you have my hearty congratulations and a virtual pat on the back. Pat, pat, pat, pat, pat. All right, so Garza was great. Hugo Gonzalez was incredible. He struggled with Brandon Ingram a bit and I think that's just a. A part of his development. Obviously he's 19 and getting used to the NBA, the rules, the, you know, the, the way guys play. He's a smart kid. He's gonna figure it out. Ingram, I think, put him in a blender A little bit and drew some fouls, but Ugo figured it out and played incredible. He finished with 10 points, 10 rebounds, two steals. He. They did end up giving him credit for a block Defensively, just to be this good is pretty incredible. To look this good, to look like you belong this quickly. And it is a testament to the Real Madrid system and his. His years as a pro in Spain. It's not. It's not. I mean, it is a culture shock, but it's a little bit easier for him to kind of acclimate and understand. Like, hey, this is what it is. He's playing in some crazy environments. You know, the. The European system and the. The European fans. He's probably been kind of like. Like the crowd in Toronto is. Is nothing. That's not a. That's not a hostile environment for him. So he has a maturity. He has. I know he said the other night that he's an emotional player, but he. He has a. A calmness to him when he's out there as well. So he. He's just. It's very. It's gonna be very interesting to see what Joe does here, because Jordan has kind of cooled off a bit. The. The. I don't know. I don't know what it is. Like, he. He's just having a little bit of trouble. He was a minus 15 in just less than 13 minutes. He didn't play at all in the second half. Now here comes Hugo again, and this. I. I definitely want to give Joe the credit because he's. He's going with whatever he, like, in the moment understands, okay, this is. This is going to work. He's not bound by what he should do. He has gotten everybody to a point where you may not play on some nights, and on some nights, you. You may be a star. Look, he. I'm talking about Jordan Walsh not playing the second half. He didn't play Peyton Pritchard in the fourth quarter in the Miami Heat game. That's incredible. And then Pritchard turns around and plays 37 minutes and has one of the best games he's ever played. That's. And if you can do that to Peyton Pritchard, you could do that just about anybody, right? Who is he going to not do that to? Jalen Brown, maybe? And even now, I'm like. I say Jaylen Brown because Jaylen's a star, but maybe there will be a moment where he turns to Jaylen is like, hey, listen, I need to make an example, you know, even if it's just a roll with me. Here. Okay, this group is rolling. It's working. I'm going to. I'm going to keep you out for a little while longer, and I need you to be with me on this so everybody on this team can see. Wow. He'll even sit Jalen if it's. If he needs to. That would be a powerful thing. It is on the same, like, in the same class picture as Kevin Garnett buying into Doc Rivers. Right. When you have the best player on the team buying into a coach and willing to do some of the things that the coach tells him to do, like that it carries a lot of weight. And so I wouldn't be surprised if Joe did that, but he'll do that to just about anybody. And so Joe pressed all the right buttons. Hell, he went with Keda and Garza in a double big lineup. Literally never gone to those two guys before this season. This is the first minutes they've ever played together in an NBA game this season. And, you know, it was. Wasn't, like, groundbreaking. It wasn't like it was a. A big deal necessarily. Like, they came in as, like, oh, wow, they stonewall them. No. But here they were in the fourth quarter of a game that wasn't decided, and he just said, you know what? This feels like the right thing to do. Struggle a little bit at first, but he kept it going and it was okay. But Joe will do that. So give Joe Missoula the credit. He has the guys ready to play. He has them willing to do whatever. They'll go out there, they'll work hard, and if it's your night, it's your night. If it's not, it's not. And, you know, Monday night against the Pacers, Ugo might get a DNP for all we know, and Jordan might play 35 minutes and have the best game of his life. Don't know. And this is why we get to you don't count anybody out. And this is how I'm going to wrap up this bonus podcast. You don't count anybody out on this team anymore. Like, go back to the beginning of the season, and it was Sam Houser as a starter, and he started in this game, but that kind of went away. Josh Minot was a starter, and then that went away. Ugo got a start. Jordan gets the starts for a while. Garza is in the lineups doing well, and then all of a sudden he's a dnp. Then, you know, you go from just Baylor. Scheinman has his moments, and they go through these little phases, and you Think. Just when you think, like I said earlier, Baylor Shyman, I was like, yeah, I kind of done. Kind of done with Baylor Shireman. I'm okay. Like, I'm. I'm all right with this. And then he has two huge, huge plays, and he could sit there and like, I was joking before about Chris Boucher. I don't. I. I feel like there's a pretty definitive, okay, Chris Boucher is probably not going to help this team, but knowing how Joe Missoula works, there may be a moment of like, oh, here. Here's Chris Boucher's moment. And he's going to come in and play 15 minutes and be impactful and maybe change a game. You can't count anybody out. I was ready to write off Luca Garza just like, okay, here we go. He's. He hasn't been very good defensively, and it's you. You kind of get the same. You know, what you're getting with Luca Garza, and it's just. It's not great. And then he comes in and literally changes the momentum of this game. First quarter was not going well. He comes in, gives the Celtics a ton of second chances, bites at the apple, so to speak. The Celtics put up 95 shots to Toronto's 87, largely because Garza was there to create opportunities. The Celtics had 17 offensive rebounds. Again, Luca Garza had more than half of those. Obviously, it's an odd number, so you can't have actually half, but nine of them for him. So more than everyone else combined, as many as the Toronto Raptors as a team, they had nine. I wrote Luca Garza off. I counted him out. Can't do that. Cannot do that this season. Jordan Walsh sitting here like, oh, maybe the bloom's off the rose. Nope. Guarantee you Jordan Walsh is going to have another monster game and maybe a monster stretch. Josh Minot cooled off a little bit. Remember we did a whole podcast. Is Josh Minot going to be too expensive? How are they going to resign this guy? He looks amazing. What I hit. And then. And then he kind of comes back. It's like, he's okay. And then he's probably going to get another. He'll probably have a 30 point game. I wouldn't be surprised. Would you be? What would surprise you in this season? I. I can't think of anything that would surprise me. I mean, other than something outrageous that's just unlikely to happen in general. But any of these guys can have a big night with Joe Missoula, and his. The way he thinks cannot count anybody out this year. So who knows how the the the game Monday against the pace is going to go. I have no clue. No clue because Joe is a madman who wants a wolf somehow. If you don't know what that is, Google it. Joe Missoula wants to buy a wolf and he's a crazy person, but crazy like a fox, I guess. So it worked. It worked in this game. And the Celtics get the win. Back to back wins. The Celtics are now alone in third place, which is fun to talk about before Christmas because it's meaningless. But it's also fun to see the Celtics up there. Celtics play on Monday. Then they get three days off again. So just this stupid schedule. It's like a game three days off. A game, three days off. A game three games and four nights and then three days off and okay, then they get into a natural cadence of things. But I will be here for it all. I'll be here tomorrow Podcast tomorrow Normal podcast. So make sure you're subscribed. I'll try to get some guests on this week. Hopefully I can make, you know, make it a good one somewhere in there. So make sure you subscribe. Wherever you get your podcast, watch the show on YouTube if you want to get the audio ad free. Become an everydayer. Not just an everydayer, but part of the Everydayer Club. Ad free audio for five bucks a month or 50 for the year. Plus access to our Discord server, plus access to exclusive merchandise plus more. So check it out at locked on celtics.supercast.com and if we're on your Spotify wrapped Tag the network. Tag the Lockdown Podcast Network, the number one sports podcast network on the planet. Tag them. You'll get a coupon for a free month of the Everydayers Club. Now I would love it if you shared the podcast. 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