Boston Celtics DERAILED by bad shooting, late mistakes | Jordan Walsh a BRIGHT SPOT

Boston Celtics DERAILED by bad shooting, late mistakes | Jordan Walsh a BRIGHT SPOT

The make miss thing really bites the Celtics against the Sixers, but I’ll tell you the one thing they need to do to negate that right now on the Locked On Celtics podcast. Uh-huh. Yep. Y ready to see. Who else could it be? What they going to say now? Screaming like JT coral we kept the madness every game, every practice. Prime time de white on the sideline. Rain and J how it started raising business. How we finish locked on Celtics pod, home of the winners, baby. Hey there, welcome back to the lockdown Celtics podcast right here on the Lockdown Podcast Network. Where does your team every day? Your team’s the Boston Celtics and I talk about them Monday through Friday right here for free available everywhere. Shows on YouTube. Get into the comment section and share your thoughts with me, John Cares, beat writer for Boston Sports Journal. I have been covering this theme for 20 years now. I have been doing this podcast for 10. I also have written a couple of books about the Celtics. I want to thank you for making this network, the Lockdown Podcast Network, the number one sports podcasting network on the planet. Thank you so so much. You everydayers here with us every Monday through Friday. You’re the best. You’re making that happen. Today’s show is brought to you by FanDuel new customers. You bet five bucks, you get 300 in bonus bets if that bet wins. So head on over to fanduel.com to get started. I would say betting against the Celtics in the clutch is probably a good idea the way things are going right now or betting for the Sixers in the clutch. They’ve they’ve won a bunch of clutch games. But later on we’ll get into individual stuff. Jordan Walsh, uh Nimish Kada, all of those guys, the you know Jaylen, Derek, all of that. In the second segment, I’ll get into a little bit more of what the Celtics need to do to avoid these offensive uh lulls that they have. But let’s just start right at the top, which is make miss. That’s my biggest takeaway here as the Celtics lose to the Sixers. Make miss league, right? They they went into the first quarter, shot 28%. Down just one, which is amazing. A complete miracle. Uh and that’s mostly thanks to the bench coming in and stepping up. Second quarter, absolute disaster. Celtics one of 11 from three. I think this is the worst shooting quarter that that um we’ve seen in the in the NBA uh overall with a 1 for1 from three. uh whatever it was, 19 points. Uh you lose the the second quarter by nine. You go into the half down 10. Third quarter, shots start to fall. Uh Jaylen Brown’s hitting everything. Derek White’s hitting everything. Derek three from three. Three of three from three in the third quarter. And what do you know? The Celtics win the quarter by 16. Huh. Make miss league. Fourth quarter. Anthony Simons gets going. looks like he’s going to start carrying things. Uh he was, let’s see, three of four, two of two from three. He he had 10 points in the fourth quarter. Then he checks out and this is the this is one of the things that I think is going to start getting discussed. What’s the substitution pattern now? Because it’s the second game where Simons has kind of had something going. He checks out. The Celtics offense starts to stall and you go, “Oh, wait a second. Anthony has been the guy that’s kind of been taking over.” But you’re also subbing in Jaylen Brown and Derek White. So of course on the surface you say, “Well, of course you’re going to sub out Simons and you know he he is coming off the bench.” But at that point you you just wonder if playing him the full 12 minutes wasn’t you know the best idea because the the Celtics had obviously shooting issues all all the way around. Pton Pritchard did not have a great game. So maybe you just say, “Hey, look, let’s let’s roll with Anthony here and see see if he can just keep it going. Let’s just see if we can keep that role going and then, you know, Derek and Jaylen can play kind of off of his, you know, attention uh or or give him more like room to maneuver so he’s not getting as much attention.” So that’s one of the questions coming out of this. But Brown comes in fourth quarter 1 for three. Derek comes in fourth quarter one for six, one for three from three. And what do you know? Things start to fall apart. And on the other side, Justin Edwards goes three of four from three in the fourth quarter. The one miss that he had, Kelly Ubé puts back. And that goes to the other issue. The Celtics actually did a good job on the boards, but when it mattered, when it counted, they made the same mistake. Jaylen Brown said it after the game. He was gu he was guarding Edwards. First of all, he said he was guarding Richardson. There’s nobody on nobody named Richardson on the team. Uh but it was it was Justin Edwards. Uh so he was guarding Edwards and he sees Maxi driving. Maxi turns his back. Jaylen says, “I’m going to go. I’m going to make a play.” This is the Celtics defensive strategy. When a guy turns his back, you go for a steal. So, he goes to try to make a play that ends up leaving the wideopen three-pointer. And then Jaylen makes a cardinal mistake. He’s like, “Oh crap.” And then, or what he said was actually something completely different, but I’m not allowed to say that. And then he watches the ball cuz he’s like, “Oh man, I just made a mistake. I’m going to sit here and wallow in my mistake by just watching the ball go up and let’s see what happens.” And what do you know? UB is right there because Payton Pritchard, who was on UB at that moment, said, “I’m going to fly out to try to contest.” And Jaylen doesn’t recognize it because he’s ball watching. He admitted it. I’m not I’m not busting his chops here, he admitted, I got caught ball watching. He said it exact quote after the game. I got caught ball watching. And as he’s ball watching, Ubé slides right in. Boom. Offensive rebound. Game over. So, not only is it make miss, just hey, it happens. Uh the Celtics ran decent offense. It’s not that they I didn’t think they forced anything. I thought the offense was actually pretty good. They just missed a lot of shots at the end of the second quarter. I felt like the missed shots uh the the Sixers made a run at the end of the second quarter to get a little bit more separation. I think I think the missed shots started to impact the Celtics at the end of the second because that’s where the um they started to I think hang their heads a little bit, not not really defend. And the Sixers went on a run. They closed out that quarter. It was a little tough. Um, and that’s that that’s where I think it it kind of showed itself the most. But generally speaking, I thought most of this was Celtics missing good looks, decent looks, but then that offensive rebound comes in and that’s just you can’t have that happen. And Jaylen, look, it does happen and you make mistakes and you have to move on and that’s fine. But Jaylen knows it. He said it. You can’t have that happen when your guy understand that you made the right decision to try to make the steal on Maxi. The Celtics are going to live with these decisions. You made the right call. You saw it. You recognized it. You went for it. And Maxi just made a play, right? He he it steal didn’t pan out. The Celtics got burned by that a couple of times and it happens. The literally you’re just going to have to live with that this season. But also understand that you’re going to try to make a play. It’s not always going to work. And when you do, your teammates are going to have to back you up. The Celtics willingly go into rotation when you’re trying to make those plays. When that happens, you can’t turn around and be like, “Oh, man. This guy that’s been killing us from three the entire quarter gets the shot. Oh, boohoo.” You have to understand if you’re not getting out there, if you’re not the one getting back out to your man, somebody else is. You got to turn and look. I can understand that initial, “Oh no.” But then you got to turn, look, identify who the open man is, and bump Ubé. Even if you bump them at that point, uh the Celtics, worst case scenario, they, you know, you call a foul. At least the play stops and maybe, you know, maybe you call, I think they might have been in the penalty, but I’d rather take the chances at the line than with the simple putback. Either way, you still have to go there and at least make the effort. You still have to go get back there and make that play. Jaylen knows it. The Celtics just have to be better at that. Again, I recognize that a lot of this stuff you might be asking guys to be, you know, it’s a little bit unfair to have Jaylen. Jaylen does so much and he had an offshooting night. I didn’t think he had a bad night. I think he had a an offshooting night, but those plays are just those are the ones you have to make. And fair or not, that’s that’s that’s a moment where you can’t be caught ball watching. And Jaylen was another tight loss here. The late game issues rear their ugly head again. And the one thing Brian Scallyrini brought it up on the broadcast, I was thinking at the same time, I’ve been thinking it. The Celtics execution is not great. It’s the one thing the Celtics need to do. these missed opportunities that are killing them in these games. I will talk about them when I come back. Today’s show is brought to you by FanDuel. The NBA is back and this is the place to go to get in on the action. FanDuel is uh if you miss the start of the game, no problem. FanDuel has live betting. 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Late game issues once again a problem for the Celtics. It’s that the the end of the game where the Celtics you Jaylen gets double team. He gets it over to Derek White. You might argue that he got fouled. I think the last two-minute report will will be interesting on Wednesday, but either way, you just don’t want to put it in that in that spot. You never want to be in a spot where you’re putting the refs in a position to make your call and bail you out. The Celtics needed to have better execution. They scored what uh they six eight points in the last six minutes of the game. You can’t do that. You got to you got to execute. The end of game execution has to be there. And again, maybe you can argue that uh that uh that Simons could have should have been in the game. Maybe Joe should have adjusted a little bit more. Um, but it’s still on the players. It’s still on the players to get out there and make the plays. You just got to be better at that. The It’s not the first time the late game execution has been an issue. It won’t be the last for this Celtics team. But I think the bigger thing is putting yourself in a position where the late game is a, you know, you need to execute down the stretch. You could have made things a little bit easier on yourselves. And and this is where the missed opportunities come in. And this is where, you know, Scal was was talking about it and I I’ve seen this over the past, you know, for for most of the season, but also recently especially, the Celtics are getting themselves in position to get to have good opportunities. they are making plays, getting out into transition and then, you know, getting blocked. Like Jordan Walsh gets out into transition, takes a dribble, you know, slows up, takes a dribble like he he gathers himself and just slows up enough he ends up getting blocked. And that’s just a situation where you have to understand the Sixers are they’re bearing down on you. you know you’re being chased. Just turn, take your step, lay it in. You don’t have to go up for the dunk. Just turn, lay it in, and just get right up there. Don’t give them the opportunity to make a play. You have like a a a twoon one or a threeon two and the pass just ends up going off somebody’s foot like Garza was trying to make a pass. It was just just a little tick late. or a plenty of roles where I saw Nimish Kada just wide open down low, including that last basket, the the last shot attempt where he was if if they looked up, they probably had him wide open, but on a number of roles, he’s there. And the Celtics just aren’t seeing the floor. And this is part of, you know, not having the the offense that they had last year and it’s much more read and react and and because the talent level isn’t quite there, it’s not as easy to read things in the at the same speed. But the Celtics are missing opportunities. They are either a step slow or u a half second too late or their their decision is just a a hair off. The the NBA pro sports in general are about quick decisions. The the team that can make the quickest best decisions are are the teams that are going to win. And that is across the board. It’s in football when a quarterback decides to throw and threads a needle. You know, those types of plays in any sport, the difference between a successful play and a play being broken up are not even inches. It’s a half inch. It’s millimeters. It’s whatever measurement you want, whatever tiny little fraction of whatever the difference between a fingertip or a toe or a a player being too far underneath the basket to finish that is that is minuscule. And the Celtics are routinely on the wrong side of that. they are routinely just a little late on a pass or not seeing the pass until oh man I I I couldn’t make that you know and and that’s where whether it’s trust whether it’s repetition whether it’s combinations somehow as you progress through the season that has to clean up And that’s going to be, I think, one of the biggest areas of growth that we should be looking for as the Celtics try to figure this stuff out. It’s 12 games. They’re five and seven after 12 games. It’s not the worst. It’s not the worst place in the world to be, but also it’s it’s lining up to be a very mediocre season. This is this is a team that’s right now fighting for 500. The next few games and as we as we progress, the next game is going to be Memphis. They also played on Tuesday night. They are a circus. They are a mess. So hopefully the Celtics can get back on track. You get a couple of games against Brooklyn. Uh they’re not good, but they’re not going to roll over. So, but maybe the Celtics, they’re five and seven. Can you can you get a little streak together here? Can you learn some of these lessons? Can you get to uh eight and seven? That would be very helpful. But how do you get to eight and seven? These things that I’m talking about, the execution, the recognition of the play, recognition of where the help is coming from, knowing who’s open and getting the ball to that player on time, on target, and finishing the play. You got to finish. The Celtics get out into transition more than they did last year, but they’re scoring at a lower percentage and so they’re not getting the full advantage of that. They’re they’re not completing the advantage. So the the positive side is they are creating the advantages. The negative side is you’re not finishing them off. And whether the Celtics are good enough to take that next step is the question. Wherever that that progress comes from, it’s got to come from somewhere if they are going to be better than a 500 team. So, that’s what we’re watching for as the season progresses. Again, plenty of time to try to figure this out, but they have to figure it out. Individual performances. I haven’t talked about any individual players. Jordan Walsh continues to be uh to take huge steps forward. In fact, did he pass Josh Min? Weren’t we just talking about how Josh Min’s too good for this team? and now didn’t even play in the second half. What is going on here? We’ll talk about that next. Today’s show is brought to you by Mint Mobile. If you’re still overpaying, overpaying for wireless, it’s time to say yes to saying no. At Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no. No contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees, no BS. I said yes to making the switch and getting premium wireless for just $15 a month. Mint makes it simple. 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If you’re in fantasy basketball, you’re not listening to Josh, then you just don’t care about winning your league. He’s going to give you the yads, the drops, the trades, who to be just keeping an eye out for just so you can pounce right at the right time. He’s got you covered. He’s part of why this is the number one sports podcasting network around. So check it out. Wherever you found this podcast, you can find Josh Lloyd and Lockdown Fantasy Basketball. Individual performances. Uh Jordan Walsh uh played a careerhigh 29 minutes in this game. Started the second half and was great on Tyrese Maxi defending Tyresese Maxi down the stretch. M Maxi, this is this is what makes this loss particularly frustrating because it was another fourth quarter Sixers comeback. This is what they do. But Maxi had four points on one of five shooting in the fourth quarter. He did have four assists, but that’s partially because Justin Edwards went berserk, but a lot of that was uh was on Jordan Walsh. And Jordan at the end of the game did a great job. He gave the Celtics a chance to win with his defense on Maxi at the end of the game. Kind of wild to see because like I said, we were talking about this in yesterday’s podcast with Tom Westerholm. You know, that’s that point in the party where you say, “Ah, okay. I think I’m not I’m not leaving just yet, but you know, you’re starting to you’re you’re trying to see where the coat is and all of that stuff.” And here’s Jordan Walsh being like, “Nope, we’re having another drink. We’re playing your favorite song just came on. We’re sitting here. We’re hanging out a little bit more. So, yes. Love it. Good for Jordan Walsh for for me, you know, growing into this guy super quickly. It’s almost like Josh Min gave him the blueprint. We were talking about Tom said it in the last, you know, on a recent podcast. It’s like, uh, Josh Min is what we thought Jordan Walsh could be. And now here comes Jordan Walsh going like, “Oh, okay. Oh, I didn’t realize that’s what you wanted. Yeah, I can do all that. Uh, which I don’t think that’s how it actually went, but it feels like Josh came along and Jordan said, “Oh, okay. I got you.” And he’s just stepped into it. Now, I don’t know what’s wrong with Josh Minot. Now, he started again, but he didn’t play he played a couple minutes in the second quarter. He he ended up playing eight minutes overall. Uh, was a minus 10. So, I got to go back and look at the his minutes to see exactly why he has fallen out of favor so quickly, but he started barely played in the second quarter, did not play in the second half. Jordan comes in, starts that third quarter, and was really, really good for them. So, good for him. Uh, we had uh let’s see, Luca Garza had a nice performance off the bench. He was good. Uh, let’s talk about the the big dudes, the big guys. Jaylen Brown, Derek White, who first, second, and fourth quarters weren’t particularly great, but in the third quarter were awesome. So, overall, Jaylen Brown eight of 18, Derek White seven of 20. Uh, Derek was four of 11 from three, which is okay. Um, could be better, but it’s okay. He had, but he had a stretch there in the third quarter where he was three for three. So outside of the third quarter, he was 148 and that’s bad. So once again, that shooting that I was talking about before. Now he did other things. Couple of block shots, seven assists. This is for Derek. Five rebounds. Uh Jaylen did other things, too. Five assists, six rebounds, but you needed seven. Um Jaylen gets to the line, seven of eight. Uh but you know the one miss was a late one. Uh not that it really would have made much difference but all it would have done really is made it another one-point game which is what the other two losses the other two games were. So a combined combined three points in the two losses uh the difference for the Celtics that that kind of sucks. Uh Jaylen said this was like took advant uh took responsibility. He said this is on me and you know you got to make shots, you got to make plays and sure. Yes. Yes. Jaylen Brown needed to be better. Derek White needs to be better. He needs to find some consistency. Pton Pritchard did not play well in this game. Minus nine. You don’t normally see that. Five points, three assists, three rebounds. Uh just was not he was not defending. He was he was not doing uh he was not a real part of the offense in the fourth quarter. It was just uh you know I if you’re going to do whatever you need to do to win games, Pritchard at that point it should it should have just been 12 minutes in the fourth quarter for Anthony Simons and Pritchard should have just been like yeah I get it and he would have he you don’t have to worry about pissing off Pton Pritchard like he he gets it and he’ll come back in the next game and and just try to be better against Memphis. Uh, so I I am curious to see how the rotations will will continue. I’ve said this on the podcast many times. I’ll continue to say I wonder if the Simons to the starting lineup Pritchard to the bench thing is going to happen at some point. It’s I know Simons can cook. he’s got the green light in that fourth quarter and that’s that’s the the spot where maybe Pritchard would be. So I I I’m still not sure how this would work, but I’m I’m just saying that Simons is starting to come around a little bit. Pritchard is still kind of struggling and I’m wondering if Pritchard in a more comfortable role. Simon’s in a more comfortable starting role if that’s going to be a switch that’s made. It’s not time for it yet. I’m not saying do it, but I’m just saying after 12 games, maybe by 20 25 games, you got to take a look at this and and just see. I’m just throwing it out there. It’s not uh it’s not a slight on any of these guys, but just wonder if there’s like a comfort level thing where that switch gets made. So, um, Aada, Namish Aada has, you know, some some things that I didn’t like for sure. Um, I didn’t like that off the dribble early jumper that he took. I know he’s wide open from three and he takes threes before games. He takes threes in practice, so he was wide open. It’s not out of the question that he would hit one, but he airballed it. I I just not thrilled with with that. But otherwise, I think he mostly had a pretty good game. Uh very active defensively. Had one stretch. We had a block, came down, got the ball on the on the on the left block and made a nice pass to Derek White, was it? I think uh nice finish underneath like that that nice little bounce pass. He’s seeing the floor. Okay. Like he makes these little passes. He’s improving for sure. Um I do think the numbers his plus minus numbers are a little a little exaggerated with the early s sample size but he is improving. I think he is he’s playing well and uh you know the 10 rebounds, eight points, 10 rebounds, good two block shots, he’s he’s playing well. He’s playing well. Um not much from Sam Hower. He just needs to be better. And 104 from three is not going to do it. Uh Simons, I’ I’ve mentioned him a few times. He had a good stretch there in the fourth quarter. I don’t think he had a a great overall overall game, but 17 points, the five assists, he was throwing some lasers. He was throwing some passes. I was like, “Oo, that was ambitious and it got through.” But overall, you know, decent game, decent game for Anthony Simons. He’s he’s starting to figure it out. Like I said, Garza was um he had a stretch where he was pretty good. Uh Ugo Gonzalez uh was playing pretty well, but he sprained his left ankle. Let’s see what what comes of that. Uh, but he I thought he made, you know, a couple of nice plays. Uh, so, but that’s it. Shout out to Jordan Walsh, man. He’s he’s stepping up and I appreciate that he’s taking advantage of the opportunity. Who knows how each game’s going to go. I really don’t I really have no idea. There was a point early in this game where I was like, Jordan’s he’s not hitting the shots. He was like a little bit a little bit off. And I’m like, is this is this where things start to like turn? I’m I’m still I’m still not ruling out anybody. Like, I’m still not ruling out that he’ll get DMPS at some point. Right now, he’s flying high and and looks like he’s earning a spot in the rotation, but it won’t take long. It won’t take much for him to to be like, you know, bad matchup or something like that and somebody else steps up. Who knows? But I think we’re starting to see, you know, Buché, Shyman, Tilman, now those guys are all getting DNPs. We’re starting to see a little semblance of a rotation. Is this where it settles? Is is this, you know, do you tweak the starting lineup a little bit? What’s going on with Josh Mini? Does Jordan Walsh start? Does he become a starter against the Memphis Grizzlies? I don’t know. Anything is possible right now with these guys as they try to figure it out. But tough loss. This easily could have been a win and they would feel better about themselves. But like I said, with Memphis and Brooklyn coming up, couple of opportunities to uh there’s a Clippers game mixed into that they they could eight and seven, eight and eight, somewhere in that range, they’d be okay. Uh but you can’t you can’t keep losing these games. You you got to start beating these teams. Uh you got to start beating the teams that you’re supposed to beat. You can’t you can’t lose these late leads. You have to finish these things off. So, we’ll see how they progress. I’ll be there tomorrow after the Memphis game. So, podcast coming up after the Memphis game. That’s the next podcast. And then they get a few days off, but I will be here Monday through Friday no matter what. Uh bonus podcast when they play on weekends like next Friday night. So, you’ll get a a bonus podcast there as well. Just subscribe to the podcast. Show’s free. It’s available everywhere. This way it just shows right up into your feed. You can watch a show on YouTube. Subscribe there. Ring the bell, thumbs up, all that stuff. Important. More importantly, get into the comment section and share your thoughts. Would love to hear your thoughts, see your thoughts, and then share the podcast. 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.

Boston Celtics stumble against the Philadelphia 76ers as late-game execution and offensive lapses haunt their clutch performance. Can Joe Mazzulla’s squad overcome recurring issues and finally capitalize on transition opportunities? Missed shots, crucial defensive breakdowns—especially from Jaylen Brown—and substitution choices raise tough questions for Boston’s bid to move above .500.

John Karalis of Boston Sports Journal unpacks the team’s shooting woes, the impact of Anfernee Simons’ bench contributions, and the emerging role of Jordan Walsh as a defensive difference-maker against Tyrese Maxey. With Derrick White and Payton Pritchard struggling for consistency and lineup changes looming, the Celtics must sharpen their decision-making to reverse a mediocre start. Upcoming matchups with the Memphis Grizzlies and Brooklyn Nets offer a chance for redemption—will Boston seize these opportunities or continue to falter?

1:30: Make/Miss Hurts Celtics
03:30 Celtics’ Offensive Stalling Decision
08:49 Defensive Awareness in Basketball
14:44 Celtics’ Missed Opportunities Persist
19:40 Celtics’ Next Step Challenge
23:30 Jordan Walsh’s Impactful Defense
27:11 Fourth-Quarter Rotations Analysis

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Gametime
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FanDuel
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FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN)

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Locked On NBA League-Wide: Every Team, Fantasy, Draft, WNBA & More
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Locked On Celtics is a daily Boston Celtics podcast by Boston Sports Journal beat writer John Karalis. It’s an inside look at the C’s from a former professional basketball player who is at practices & games.

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