Celtic Chalk Talk Episode 1: Season Preview and Team Analysis

Steve: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Celtic Chalk Talk. We'll be doing this every week. We'll be talking about the Celtics, their progress, what's going on, and how they're doing. My name's Steve Perello. I'm a lifelong Celtic fan. I was a basketball high school basketball coach and involved in athletics throughout my life. The. My following of the Celtics and my love of the Celtics goes back to Bill Russell days. So I can go back and tell you about a lot of different things that went on back then. For Boston. It's gonna be an interesting year. This today for the first week we're gonna look at Boston as a team and what we can see or think about. I think this year is an interesting year, I think. If the Celtics do well, 45 wins would be the ceiling. With this team, there's a couple of caveats that go with that. If Jason Tatum is able to come back and they know he's going to play and he's healthy and they think he'll be doing what he's supposed to be doing, it gets interesting because the deadline in February for [00:01:00] trades becomes very important. Why does it become important? Boston has Anthony Simons, whose contract will expire at the end of the year. Teams who are pretty good, might want that extra score to get 'em over the top. Now, Boston's goal should be to make that trade to get a big, if guys like Walker Kessler are out there, although Danny Age being who he is with Utah will. Extract a great deal. Boston has their draft picks. Boston can make a trade with that with Simons, but I don't think they'll want Simons. There's other bigs out there. Rob Williams comes to mind. Portland with Rob, they probably will look to get rid of him because they have two centers they've drafted in the last two years in Clinging and Hansen. So they might be looking to deal with Rob and Rob's expiring contract. So that's a risk because Rob's not healthy that often, but if he is, we all know as Celtic fans what [00:02:00] Rob can do. Now if Tatum comes back and he's strong and he's near his own self. You if you get a center, Boston, they get into the playoffs. I don't think anybody will want to play against Boston. Jason Tatum brings them and completes them. They have some offense and they have some players that can play. They're not bereft of talent now. Their guards are very good. They've got four of the best, like four. The combo of guards is the best, one of the best in the league. JB Jalen Brown is. One of the top 1520 players in the NBA Peyton Pritchard is becoming a very good offensive player, and Peyton Pritchard has learned, he's not a great defender, but he's learned to battle and do the little things. On the court to keep him out there as, even though his defense isn't as good as some of the other players, so he [00:03:00] and he's going to have the ball in his hands a lot more, he's gonna score a lot more. And I think he almost, he doesn't negate Drew holiday's leadership in different things. But what I do think, what I do think is Pritchard can score a lot more than holiday. And let's face it, holiday's career was starting to, is starting to close and. He's not healthy as often. Pritchard will be out there playing every game. Derek White, what could I say? What a great clutch player, A great Celtic and good defender. He can do it all. And he's an outstanding player. And without Tatum, I think people are gonna see more and more how good he really is. Anthony Simons can't defend. We still, we've seen that in the preseason, but Anthony Simons. Is a walking bucket. He gets on a roll. He can score. He can score with anybody. He can shoot the three as well as anyone, and he can play. He's valuable. He's playing for a contract, so he's value [00:04:00] valuable. Because of that playing for the contract and also wanting to be coached. 'cause I don't think he minds staying with the Celtics from what I've read. So you've got these four pretty good guards to work with. Hopefully with Tatum you've got plenty offense. That's not the issue with this team. We the glaring need is defensive, rebounding, and a bake. That's where Simons comes in. If we can deal and maybe get something, as I mentioned previously the other thing about that is we've been using a couple different people, which I'll talk about. NAIAs. Cada is the hope that he can do it In the last pre-season game against Toronto, he rebounded he blocked a few shots and he was active. If we get that cada we're in business he could help. I don't know if he's good enough to be a starter and play in 35 minutes and doing the good stuff that he can do, but he can be a help for the team. The other the other thing [00:05:00] you hope for is again, a backup. The other person I failed to mention who I guess goes with that offense is Sam Houser. Sam Houser is another guy like Pritchard. Busts himself on defense. Not a great defender, but doesn't they try to pick on him, but he doesn't. He holds his own. He holds his own. He's a good defender. I kinda like him, I think. And we all know he's one of the better three point shooters and in the league. And that's what makes him so valuable. And he's on a good contract, I believe, 11, 11 million a year. So he's a valuable bench piece for the Celtics. A couple things I wanted to add with the need of rebounding. I think Boston's rebounding defensively will be in the bottom five in the league and percentage of rebounds. That's not a good thing. That's where we need that. Now what's really interesting to me, and I don't think Boston's gonna bite, but I believe Charles Bassey was cut this [00:06:00] week or last week by the Hawks, I believe. But he was cut Now during the summer, if you remember. A lot of Celtic fans were clamoring that they signed him 'cause he can rebound and he's a, I guess he could be a rim protector and so on. I don't know if Boston will bite on that, but they do need some defensive rebounding now that, that is so important defensively. If you're a Celtic fan, you know that the Celtics played a more of a containing defense, I'll say by that they tried, they, they had five good defenders on the court most times. And they defended. They defended the basket. They didn't pressure, they just defended. Now they have a different type team, and you have Joe Missoula trying to. Build up a, the ability to run, which is an important piece, but also defensive pressure. They wanna take the ball away from teams. They wanna double and run and jump and do those things that create havoc on a [00:07:00] court. I think they're gonna be pretty good at it. And I think it's a necessary thing because if you don't have good rebounding and bigs, you need to just make the game, take the game away from close to the basket and make the other team struggle to get to where they want to get to. I think they will do that. Don't forget, Joe Missoula is a coach who, he's an alpha. And by that I mean he doesn't, I don't think he's gonna handle losing real well and he's gonna be pushing these, this team to do what they can. Where do I put Missoula as a coach? I look at him as going to be a very good coach. He is a very good coach. But over time people will begin to realize how good a coach he is. So that's an important piece to this. And I think he's going to push this team to, to overachieve. A lot of people are talking with that overachieving is about Jalen Brown being freed of Tatum and we'll be able to do it. I think he will. [00:08:00] And I think. It'll reflect in the assist 'cause he'll have the ball in his hands, his usage rate will go up and I think he will get his assist and do well. So in that way, I don't know if he can score more, but he will do more things. A couple things I just wanna mention. Some of the non players, or not non players, but the players on the bench who were hoping for that I didn't talk about. Josh Minot is an interesting player. He's athletic, he can run, he can shoot. Not a bad defender, can rebound. Not a great three point shooter, but we can live with that. He's a great bench piece and he's gonna help them and he's gonna get real time. I don't think there's a question about that. Chris Boucher is another guy who will get real time, probably, might possibly start as a four. He might even play five at times, but I don't know if he can handle any bulky teams 'cause he's wirey frame and I think he can get pushed around. The thing that [00:09:00] Boucher brings to the table is he can shoot a three. Being able to shoot a three is a big. Think of Al Horford. I'm not saying Boucher is anywhere near as good as Al was, but what Al Horford brought to the table was when you double somebody, he's open and he can hit it. I think Boucher can do the same thing. So in that way, Boucher's got some value. He's decent on not a great rebounder, but he's decent around the basket defensively. Not great, but he'll suffice, I guess would be the best way to put it. Luke Garza is an interesting piece. He's a bench player to come off the bench. If he plays 10 minutes, we'll be okay. He can shoot, he can offensive, rebound, he can do a lot of those things on the offensive and defensively, he's weak. He's also the ability he can. Somewhat rebound on the defensive end. Not real well, cannot guard anybody. That's a negative. That's why you've gotta limit his time on the court. The other guys on the [00:10:00] bench, Xavier Tillman, interesting player. Let me put it this way. If he's playing more than 10 minutes a game, that means you got some weaknesses and you have problems. He hustles, he plays hard and he gives you it all. He's on the defensive end. He's pretty good. Can't shoot. Can't shoot at all. But he's a good player in spot duty, a good person to have. Like I said, if he plays more than 10 minutes, we got a problem. Baylor Shireman, we all expected such great things from Shireman. We all thought after seeing him at the end of last year, this year, he'd be a good piece off the bench and hopefully progress from there. Unfortunately, this summer and. Early preseason. He hasn't progressed. We hope he does because he's got some makings. He's done some great things on the court since he's been with the Celtics, but at other times he's just been the worst guy. And that brings me to Hugo Gonzalez. Hugo Gonzalez has shown that he can [00:11:00] be a player. He is only 19. I think he's gonna get a little, a lot of time with Maine, and he's gonna be with the Celtics right now. I would put him ahead of Shireman, which is surprising, but I would put him ahead of Shiman. And what does that mean? What it means is UO might be coming off the bench before Shireman. UO has been able, a great defender plays hard hustles and those kind of guys are infectious for the rest of a team. He also is. An adequate three shooter has shown he is. And he also, if you remember against Toronto the other day, that spin move he made, going to and beating somebody for the layup was really impressive for a 19-year-old. So he's gonna be a player. I don't know if it'll happen right away. It's gonna happen in the next couple years. He will be somebody I think the Celtics can rely on and he could become another player, think a better offensive. Marcus smart with less of that defensive intangible, but a good defender, [00:12:00] Marcus Smart had the intangible of being able to take teams outta their game and block shots and do whatever was needed and hustle like a son of a gun. I think Hugo's a better defender one, one-on-one, but not where smart is in the overall defensive scheme. But the other person, I just wanna. Bring in is Jordan Walsh. Now that's a sad, he's probably the 14th guy. If Boston were to make moves and got some players, he'd probably go two years ago. They drafted him. They knew it was a project and it would take time. It's been two years. I don't know if the project has taken off. I don't think it has. He really hasn't got himself to a level of ego. Or Shireman. They hoped he would. Maybe it still needs a little bit more time. If you remember Shan Yaba, when Boston had him, he couldn't play. Now he's made himself into a pretty adequate defender adequate bench piece, and you hope that at some point, Jordan Walsh could do that. And hopefully it happens before [00:13:00] Boston has to get rid of him. That's it for now, but what I wanna just mention is this could be a fun season. There's not these great expectations that they've had. So Boston could be an interesting team this year and fun watch. They play hard. It's everything you want. They're smart players. They're not dirty they play the game the right way. That makes it more fun. As a Celtic fan, I look forward to it. Now this Celtic Chalk talk will be back on. Each week I will have some comments about the team, probably running about 15 minutes or so. And we'll talk a little bit about different aspects we saw over the past week. You can find this pod in a couple different places. One is Spotify, one would be on YouTube, one would be on the peach basket.net. Website. Please listen and if you have a comment or anything, please don't be afraid to make any comments. Thank you. Take care.