Celtics Grit, Growth, and Gut Checks: Breaking Down a Wild Week in Boston Basketball

CCT-January 26 2026 === Steve: [00:00:00] Welcome to Celtic Chalk Talk for another week of Celtic basketball. My name's Steve per been around a while and been a Celtic fan throughout most of my life. Go back to the Bill Russell days. So I have a little bit of memory and I can tell you the good things and the ball, bad things at the Celtic. Last week was a really interesting week. The first game of the week was against Detroit. And that was a real interesting game for a lot of reasons. Okay. By halftime, Boston was losing by eight points and struggling. Now you gotta understand Detroit, when they play, they muck the game up. They, there's whistles every 20 seconds and really they defend, they physical they, they just play hard and they get the most out of what they have. So leading by eight at half and it just didn't look good for Boston. 'cause there the game was mucked up. Boss didn't need it to speed up the game. They never really did, but they went shot for shot with Detroit. Ultimately, they lost by a point [00:01:00] with Jalen Brown. Missing a 15 footer at the buzzer that he usually makes and things happen. The couple things that came outta that the Celtics proved 'cause they were in Detroit, that they can go out and they can play with the pistons, they can play with them in Detroit. They can play with them in anywhere else now. The next thing that comes out of it is the JT discussion when Tatum comes back. It gets interesting because I would think Boston would be a favorite playing the Pistons. Pistons are the number one team running away with the division. I believe they're five up on Boston and they're really, the best team right now and in the division. But Jason Tatum changes that whole. Whole thing and how you look at it. In that particular game, Tobias Harris had a tremendous game. He had 25 hit a couple big threes outta the corner and hurt the Celtics. I don't expect that to happen over a series. He might have a game or two like that. But he had his night. The other thing [00:02:00] that didn't happen and it's gotta happen and he showed signs in the last game of the week against the bulls the other night, but Derrick white's gotta be, go, come outta that slump. He's not shooting well at all. He's struggling even on his little floaters that he usually makes, he's gotta come. He's too important a player. He does other things on the court, but they need his points. Remember, two scorers wins games, and Derek should be one of them. Next week we come into the Pacers. Horrible game to watch. Just difficult. Boston won by 15, but it was a tough game. It was sloppy. Boston had 16 turnovers. The thing was Brown had 30, and Sam Hauser had 17. And I'm gonna talk more about Sam Hauser in a few minutes. And that's your two scores. What was interesting in the game, ne cda. 17 and nine rebounds and five blocks now Garza, eight and six, [00:03:00] 8.6 rebounds. If you do some math and do a little bit of thinking, that's 25 points and 15 rebounds now. Indiana doesn't have any real big men. So though they played well, okay, I wanna see those numbers come back against the team with some good bigs and then I can feel a little more confident that this too can play in the playoffs and help us. That's a big thing to think about for the Celtics. It's a game. They should win. They did win. But they need to play more consistently and better. And a team like Indiana in your own, when you're playing in Boston, you should be able to just put them away and just get it done, but they didn't, and maybe they're not quite a real good team. Consistency matters in this situation. I don't know what the Celtics have there. Now. We go to Friday night's, game against the Nets, probably one of the more entertaining games of the season. Boston blew a [00:04:00] 10 point lead in the last three minutes. And in fact, we're down by five and I believe in overtime and, it's just incredible. Just there's so many things to talk about. First thing was you had Kada and Garza fouling out. So now what does Boston do? Fortunately, they bought Amari Williams in from Maine and he just got to the game in time. About an hour or two before the game to play because they felt Cada was not feeling well and he might not go. So they had him on the bench and that was a big thing as the game kind of played itself out. Good thing Boston shot 43% from three. The biggest play of the game, by the way. Jalen Brown had the triple double and it wasn't one of his greatest games, but he's just so tough down the stretch and tough and to tough, just tough going to the basket. He's so strong. He goes in a straight line. Very difficult to play against him 'cause of his strength. The one thing he's gotta worry about is that push off. If his arm is out, he's gotta keep it in and [00:05:00] use more of the body. When he goes to the basket, but he is so good at just going straight line basket and off two feet scoring. But the, let's get to the fun part of this Boston down, first of all, I believe by sick or five with not much time left in ot. In first overtime, what happens is first Boston runs a play. Amari Williams comes in the game. Hauser throws the long pass to Williams. What we saw the Clippers do early in the year would harden Amari taps the ball to Pritchard. Pritchard hits a three, so now you're down two and very little time left. And Boston now they still have one time out. They didn't use it. On the last one after the foul shots by the Nets. So now the next time they foul Rei, who is a nice young player by the way, and he played well. I think he had 21 against Boston Friday [00:06:00] night, but they foul him. If he makes both the game's over Boston loses what happens. He makes one misses the second Boston rebound timeout. What is, what do they do now? They're, they go out there. It appears that the nets were gonna be in a zone. Joe Missoula, who does a great job and really has a pretty good mindset and can figure things out quickly, sees this, all of a sudden right before they're about to take it out, they run, he gets UO into the game, puts him in the far corner. Or in the strong side corner where the wall was taken out from the, what Missoula must have seen is how everybody was pinched up towards the wing. So the corner he thought might be open. Where does the pass go? It goes to the corner. U goes wide open. He's got an open three and he nails it, brings it to double overtime. In double overtime. It was really interesting. [00:07:00] Amari Williams made a tremendous block, made a three point play, and played well in, in that couple minutes of overtime. He's somebody that I wanna talk about later, but he's somebody that showed a lot. The other thing they had was Peyton Prichard Squid eight in that overtime to help Boston put it away. It was a great win. Honestly, the Boston didn't deserve to win, but they did enough to pull it off against the nets. And by the way, the Nets deserve credit 'cause they play so darn hard against Boston and they probably should have won. Then we go to Chicago next night. Tough to play two nights in a row in the NBA these days. What a tough loss. Brown had 33 and he made a big layup, not a layup, but in front of the basket. Little. Shot with 12 seconds left, I believe, to tie the game. Now the Bulls who shot tremendously in this game, [00:08:00] they shot 46% from three Celtics showing all guts in this game. They were tired and they weren't playing well. And don't forget, brown played 40 something minutes the night before, was playing all 36, 37 this night. You're asking for a lot outta your team. One good thing, as I said before, Derrick White hit a couple threes that really helped Boston, but now with 12 seconds or 14 seconds, whatever it was, the bulls have the ball after a timeout, they move the ball around and they get the ball to hurt her. Kevin hurt her in the corner and he's wide open. Cada came out and contested it with the old Cort Con contest but hurt or hits it with two tenths of a second left. That's the game. Boston loses a tough game, but look on the bright side, they did get Friday night's game. If they lost Friday night, it would've been a disaster of a week. So they got one added. And that back to back. Usually Boston plays better in the second game of a back to back. Their record has shown it over the years, [00:09:00] but now a couple things I just wanna mention, Sam Houser, he is emerging. He is emerging as a player. He's not only hitting open threes a he defends, he plays hard. He's not great, but he does a good enough job in defense to keep his body there and he can get rebounds. But more importantly, he's also developing the ability to go to the basket and pull up and hit a jumper and do things off the dribble. If he continues, you got something there and they've got a couple years of him for 11 million, that's a steal. If he continues to do that, and if he continues to shoot over 40, 45%, it's a steal anyway. So from three, if he continues to do that. So those are steals. Derek White, I've said it a couple times. Gotta come outta that slump. Derrick. We need you and we need your ability to hit the three, especially the way you've always done in the fourth quarter. That is so important. Something to be proud of. The Celtics always play hard, tough back to back Saturday night. They didn't have a [00:10:00] lot there, but they played hard and played together. Those are positives and make you like watching a team. The last thing I'm gonna talk about is Amari Williams. My sense you got a week and a half or two weeks till the trade deadline. You gotta get a good look at this guy because he might be somebody who can help you as a big, and you don't have to trade Simon's, you don't have to do anything to get a big, and if he continues to develop, you've got your big of the future as well. My, my sense being that you gotta get him some time in the next week and a half or two weeks and really, or a week make a decision. Can Amari help us if he can? If he can. It just makes you a better team. And by the way, second round pick getting triple doubles at Maine this year as a two-way player. And it's just another feather in Brad Stevens cap and the Celtics cap and how they come up with these [00:11:00] guys and they develop 'em. That's it for today. Please listen next week on Monday when we do some more of Celtic Chalk talk. Thank you.