Celtics Dominate Sixers in Game 1: Tatum and Brown Lead Boston’s Playoff Blowout

Untitled project from SquadCast === Steve: [00:00:00] Welcome to Celtic Chalk Talk. My name's Steve Purciello, lifelong Celtic fan from the Bill Russell Days to today. I've been around a bit and what I will say is it's a great time to be a Celtic fan. Before we begin, I just want to remind you about the Peach Basket Network, which is what we're on. It's a fan driven network. If you like what you're hearing here, go back and look into the website and look at other people who will. Record, it's all fan driven, so we encourage you to look at it. It's an organically growing thing on the Peach Basket for the Celtics. After Philadelphia dispatched of the Orlando Magic, we realized we had Philadelphia last Wednesday night. Philadelphia coming to town should present some problems 'cause you do have a Tyrese Maxey who can play and VJ Edgecomb. Now we know MB is out for a while. We don't know when he'll be back, I don't think. I don't expect he'll be back within the next week. So that's an important [00:01:00] break for Boston and it's good to have. Now. Game one was just an interesting game. Boston won of the, easily won 23 to 91. Was Philadelphia ready to play? No. Did they shoot well? No. We'll get into that. It was a choppy game. There were a lot of whistles, but Boston just pummeled them. They played tremendous defense. Philadelphia was terrible. They shot 39% from the floor, 17% from three. Now, if you think it's gonna be an easy series, which it could be. Don't get thinking that Philadelphia's got nothing. Tyrese Maxey can go off at any time and we all know he is an outstanding player. VJ Edgecomb is a very good player who will be a real, a great one, possibly someday. That's some talent. And Paul George is a good, steady veteran who could still has something left in him. So this is not a pushover series, although game one indicator that was 'cause Philadelphia again. Was terrible. They weren't [00:02:00] ready to play Tyrese. Maxie went eight for 20, which is unheard of. He usually hurts Boston from inside and out. And what was very interesting about it was Maxie did not. Wil to take the three. He usually hurts Boston with that step back three that he'll take from anywhere and just from beyond the line and just hurt you. And then he can go into the lane and just hit all kind of assortment of shots. He's such a great player and he's so fast. He wasn't playing well, as was well, the rest of the team, when you're shooting 17% from three, the Philly didn't look like they wanted to take threes. I guess they felt they didn't have it going. Again, it's one meaning. It's a nice win. It's a blowout, but don't think it's over. Remember the Lakers in 85, which is one of the worst things. Boston annihilated them in the first game in the finals. The Lakers came back and won that series. That's just a reminder. I'm not saying Philly is [00:03:00] the Lakers, but these things happen and you just got to move on and play the next game. Like it's nothing in the series, and just go and beat 'em up. Tatum had a tremendous game. He had a 25 and 11 with seven assists and he didn't play much in the fourth, so he could have had the triple double. Jalen Brown went off in the third quarter to put the game away. He had 26, 4 and three. I think he had 14 in the third quarter. He didn't play the fourth quarter. What was an interesting situation? Philly cut the lead to 15 middle and the third Boston came back in. The two straight possessions hit Threes opened at 21, probably about five or six minutes left. I think Vukovich had the second one. Philly called Time Out. At that point you. Philadelphia had nothing left. If they would've continued that, it could have been a ball game if they could have gotten it into the single figure deficit, but they didn't. And when Boston hit those two threes, it was just like, goodbye. You're [00:04:00] done. You don't have the energy to catch us. And it's over. Boston shot 16 for 44 from three 36%. That's a normal Boston game. Nothing great, nothing bad, which is good 'cause they'll have a hot one coming. 50% from the four. Philly gave up so many straight line drives. Boston had layups left and right. Philly didn't defend real well. And you know what? They really didn't even get physical when they were losing. And that, that tells you something because usually when a team's getting whipped like that in the playoffs, they're going to commit a hard foul or do something to just change the whole game around. They didn't. And also Philadelphia missed so many layups two and three times. There was a couple sequences where they had two or three layups and they missed them all, so they really weren't ready to play. Now let's look at some other things. First of all, the playoffs schedule for this next few weeks. [00:05:00] They, Boston will play tomorrow night, Tuesday and then Friday. And then Sunday. Those are the games we lock in on Friday. Sunday are in Philly. Tomorrow night's in Boston, we can't say it's over. We want to say it's over because we wanna move on and hopefully see the Knicks, but we can't. And we've gotta take these games, as I said, one at a time. That's the key in this schedule. Put 'em away and move on. Now Vukovi, I go back and forth on him some days. I think he can help them so much 'cause he can shoot and play so well, and he's not a great defender, but he can rebound and then other days he doesn't. He had a three in this game, as I said before. And he was fair. But he's gotta show more. He's gotta show more because Garza's playing real well. What Boston doesn't have when they use Garza and Vukovich they lose with Cada is that ability I to intimidate around the basket and beat a [00:06:00] block shots. In fact, I was, there was a. Situation where somebody was going to the basket, Garza tried to take a charge. Now I understand that and it's a good move. However, he's a big, he's supposed to box shots. So Boston has two viable offensive backups, but neither of them can be rim protectors, and that's a vital. Peace when you're trying to win a series. I guess you go with Vukovich for now because he's been there not in championship series, but he's been there around so long. He can play in these situations, but it's an interesting thing to watch because both of them can help Boston in different ways naturally. Cada got in foul trouble yesterday. He needs to stay on the court and he needs to stay out of foul trouble. The referees, they say playoff games are supposed to be called. Tight, not tighter, looser in a way that they let people get away with a [00:07:00] little more, and there's a lot more physicality. This game was not, the officials were blowing the whistle consistently and quite often and calling fouls as fouls, as opposed to letting things go. And so consequently we had a lot of fouls and a lot of slow stoppage where the game never got into a flow that's not good. But it didn't matter. Boston was all the way on top. The other thing that I noticed and this is a little thing that kind of needs to be worked on. Brown in isolation when he goes into his dribbling, which is no problem 'cause he usually gets a good shot out of it. But he's gotta see the court because there's so many times where if he dribbles going from on the right side, dribbling right, which is what he usually does. The left corner is wide open and he's gotta begin to see that and take advantage of it because they're giving Boston the open three and Boston thrives on threes. Now if you're [00:08:00] Missoula, you try to put one of your better corner shooters in that side, maybe a Shyman who can hit her Hauser and when you do that, you're going to force the defense to. Open up more and it's gonna give brown more room, but it starts with Jalen Brown throwing the pass. That's important. A couple other comments just in random about the playoffs. I was very fascinated by seeing Orlando take apart take apart. Detroit last night, it was a very interesting game. I thought the Orlando is a team that's gonna give Detroit tru trouble 'cause they play the same way. They're physical and there's a lot of stoppages because of whistles being blown on fouls. And they became the bully and it's very interesting. And Detroit has been the bully all year. Detroit didn't handle it real well, and that's something to watch because though I thought Orlando was dead after Wednesday night against Philly, they've come back and they've come back in a big [00:09:00] way and we all know they might have some problems amongst them. But boy, they got talent so they could be a problem. And if they can, at least give Detroit a rough time, if not beat them. That's it for today. It's another great week. Great week to be a Celtic fan. And what I will say to Celtic fans is just remember. Remember back in the nineties and early two thousands how bad it was. Enjoy this. It doesn't come all the time, and this has been fun the last couple years and hopefully it goes on for another couple years. That's it for today. We'll be back again next week and another week of Celtic Chalk Talk. Thank you. Take care.