INSTANT REACTION: Brown and Pritchard lift Celtics past Clippers

INSTANT REACTION: Brown and Pritchard lift Celtics past Clippers

Walls trying to time it up with Harden. He takes it to the basket. Blocked by Derek White, the best shot blocking guard in the league. And Brown leaves it. Kada. He got his own. No foul. Need Navy. Try it again. And one. If at first you don’t succeed, try try again. All right, the extra effort from Mimi Kada right there gave the Celtics a 12-point lead at the time. That was in the fourth quarter. And then of course, James Harden, I think, had all of us holding our breath with that final shot to an attempt to tie the game. Celtics though, hang on. They get the three-point win over the LA Clippers here tonight. Tom Giles, Chris Forsburg, Eddie House with you on Celtics postgame Live. Eddie, I’ll start with you. Your thoughts on that uh what became a bit of a nailbiter? Yeah, it did. I thought um for for a second there we was going to run away with the game, but I think the game the way the game’s played nowadays, there’s no lead that’s safe, you know, unless you really bury somebody. And so James Harden, you know, showed up, but if you look at everything that we’ve done that we did as a team, when we look at team stats, we basically dominated every category. The only one that we didn’t dominate was free throws. And that’s the thing that kept this team in the game. I think shot 28 for 30 from the free throw line. So if we could have kept them off the line a little bit, then this would have been a bigger margin of victory for us. But at the same time, we’re not looking at that. We’re looking at we did get the win. I’m looking at the 26 assists. Though that number is starting to go up game by game and we need to continue to do that. Yeah, I thought the starters were awesome and it starts obviously with Jaylen Brown. Like he’s been great all season long, but especially tonight felt like he was not going to let this one get away from you. made big play after big play. The shotmaking was awesome. Had to kind of give you that output. Pritchard giving you the eight threes even if he was quieter in the second half. I thought Walsh’s first half defense did about as best he could on James Harden in that first half and then the second half he kind of just got going and some of that he lived with and some of it was just I mean Harden just making shots. So that group was great. Made up for some of the the the the lack of productivity from the bench. Kada late with that third chance effort. So, credit to those guys for hanging in there and really kind of carrying it through u on a night when like you didn’t get a whole lot from that that second group. All right. Well, the Celtics, they did have a 24point lead at one point and of course the Clippers just kind of kept making those runs and certainly made this one close, but in the end led by Jaylen Brown and his 33 points, 12 rebounds. He’s standing by with Abby Chin back at TD Garden. Jaylen, incredible ending there. What was going through your mind? What were you telling your guys down the end of the stretch? Um, just find a way to win. keep pushing. Um, they came back, closed the gap, we got to be better. I think we took our foot off the gas. You know, part of that was on me. I feel a little under the weather, but um, I’m happy we got the win. I mean, still, you were everywhere doing everything. At what point did this game tell you that you needed to take over? Just keep being aggressive. I feel like I had a bunch of shots at the rim. I just didn’t convert. But, you know, give credit to the Clippers. You know, Zubac down there, he’s a big guy. Um, but, you know, we had some guys step up. Payton played well. Dwight played well. So, um, we just got to move on to the next one. Another guy, Nimi. He told us the other day he could play as much as this team needs. He played almost that final eight minutes. How big was he? Nim has been great. Nim has been getting better every single game. So, we keep looking forward to that. Right now, we 500. Let’s see if we can get above 500 going into Brooklyn. Yeah, Jaylen, you talked about patience coming in. What encourages you most about the way you guys are playing right now? Uh, we’re continuing to learn, continuing to get better and clean up a lot of areas, you know. Um, so I’m I’m, you know, super optimistic about the rest of our season. You know, let’s see how it goes. Jaylen, thank you. Feel better. Thank you. All right. Again, Jaylen Brown with a big night once again for the Celtics. We got Drew and Scall joining us now. Just had to call this one. And Scal, you brought up on the broadcast, Celtics have not been great in these clutch games, but they’re able to hang on in this one. Your overall thoughts, fellas. Yeah, they were okay. uh offensively good making their free throws, stuff like that. But uh you got a guard and you know you you could probably look at the defensive rating during this particular game in in the clutch situation. It wasn’t good. James Hardy got a wideopen shot, but overall I thought that they played pretty well. I would have made sure like the one thing that I was really upset about was the bench. They got opportunity to come in and build the lead. the Clipper bench. Everybody talks about it as being a really hard playing team and Clipper bench got him back into this game. This team could have been over early, but give the Clippers a lot of credit and give James Harden a lot of credit. Definitely. I think a lot of those shots he hit down the stretch were basically unguardable, too. Right. I mean, there were a couple that were open, including the one at the end where they I mean, the fact that they got that shot with no timeouts in 1.6 seconds was impressive. And the Celtics fortunate that he missed it, but to your point about the bench, Luca’s a -14, mine out a -3, Hower – 16, Shyman was a plus 12. But it did seem like the Celtics starters set the tone and then the Clippers kind of erased it when the bench guys started. Yeah, we don’t want to be a team like that. You know, if you’re a I’m a guy that came off the bench. I felt really bad if I went there went in there and the lead was 12 and all of a sudden I was a minus eight. You know, that’s not your job is to at least maintain it. You could lose a little bit, two points, four points or you could build it, right? And I think uh it’s like today you like the we just I don’t know what it was about our bench. We did we it just wasn’t rolling weren’t the guys you would think after all those days off they’d be chopping at the bit to get back out there but those guys were running in mud but our starters were amazing and Pritchard and White both struggled to shoot the ball at the start of the season. Today they combined for 52 points. Pritchard has 30. D White almost had a triple double 22 points nine assists and seven rebounds. Do you think those guys are are back out of the slump? So I like the adjustment that Joe Missoula made. I think Pritchard’s playing more dominant point guard, but he’s going into dribble handoffs. He’s going and hitting Jaylen Brown on Iverson cuts where you go from wing to wing and then Jaylen Brown now is initiating the play with the live dribbles. So, I like the adjustment and it seems to me like with Pritchard having the ball in his hands that much, he’s shooting the ball better. So, a lot of good stuff that we’re seeing from the Celtics making changes, still trying to figure things out, but it’s a good time to figure things out. You’re you’re 500. You got two games coming up against Brooklyn. It’s it’s they’re NBA team, but you got to win these games and then you get ready for like a little bit tougher of a schedule. So, um I like the adjustments that they made and Derek White and and seemed like the team is really finding their footing, especially that starting group. No doubt. And Giles, the schedule lightened up a little bit. Had those three days off before this game. Celtics taking advantage and see if they do the same thing in Brooklyn on Tuesday. That will be the first time they’re above 500 all season. So, uh let’s hope for that. All righty. Yeah. Again, the win tonight getting them to seven and seven on the year. Drew Scout, thanks so much. still be with you for that Brooklyn game on

Our Postgame Live crew breaks down the Celtics’ 121-118 win over the Los Angeles Clippers