Explosive Offense, Better Defense, and Key Player Breakouts

squadcaster-0iab_1_04-06-2026_125416: [00:00:00] Welcome to another week of Celtic Chalk Talk, the podcast that talks only about your Celtics. If you are a Celtic fan, come on board. My name is Steve Purciello. I'm a lifelong Celtic fan which has been a long time. Going back to the Bill Russell Days. Have memories of that. Couple things. First thing I just wanna mention, you're listening to a, an independent broadcast and these shows from the Peach Basket are all done by fans. And it's you it's you expressing yourself. So you know, it comes from us and they love this game. We all love this game. My strong suggestion is. You check it out. Check out the website, the peach basket.net, and check out what we have to offer. There are a lot of great podcasts on it, and it would be great if you checked it out and just began to subscribe. Now back to the business, the Boston [00:01:00] Celtics this week, A three in one week, an interesting week, they played on Monday night last week. They played the hawks. They were in a back to back and there's a lot of perils with that. Tatum didn't play, which doesn't hurt help, and JT was not very good. He did score 29, but he took 29 shots to get there. That doesn't help. The hawks beat him pretty good. It was all in the third quarter, decided. And they played well defensively. The Hawks. The Hawks are a different look than what they were. They used to be a sloppy defensive team. Now they have become a pretty good defensive team. And again, the third quarter they beat Boston 36 22, which would won the game. If you follow basketball. You know about back to backs generally the third quarter is when the team in a back to back has a rough time. And in this game that happened, 36, 22, as I just said, not good for the Celtics. Luca Garza had a good game. He had 20 and nine rebounds, but [00:02:00] I'm gonna say something here. I like Luca. I think he's a good offensive player, but there's no rim protection with him. So guys, feel free to go to the basket. And they do. PRI Prichard had 16, but the the Hawks were very good at bottling it up, bottling the middle up, and really took away a lot. The picture, the hawks also. Were really good at defending. In other words, keeping their def offensive player in front of them. Those were good things. They did, it's called containing the ball. The Boston's defense wasn't good. They were retired, sloppy team, and they deserved what they got. They lost, but they come off of that, and then they go out to Miami. Beautiful. Miami on Thursday, had a day in Miami. Usually that doesn't work well because players like to have a good time in Miami, but not this time. They won 1 47, 1 29. They showed the other side. They shot incredibly well. 58%. We can say Miami's defense was [00:03:00] shoddy and it wouldn't be a lie, but Boston shot 58%, 48% from three. Think about that for a while. It's one out of every two shots basically. It's incredible. And they were on fire first quarter. It was a tight game for the first maybe 2020 or 2018, Boston went on a roll and they won the quarter 53. 50 with 53 points. It's one of the all time greatest quarters in Celtic history. JB at 43, 4 and seven. Four four Reeves and seven assists. Tatum had a triple double 20, 25, 18, and 11. And let me say something, Jason Tatum is becoming an outstanding passer and he gets people the ball when they're wide open quite often and triple doubles are gonna become more common as the years go on with Tatum. Tate is 16 and 10, which began a stretch of him playing great ball. We'll talk about that later. Hauser had 23. [00:04:00] He couldn't miss from three. He was five for seven. It goes on Pritchard at 14. And they just, Boston, the whole game their game plan was very simple. They were just gonna pick on hero. And they did. They did. They continually made, he put hero in actions where he had to defend and he couldn't. And that helped Austin because even if. They didn't score on hero. The dribble drive or whatever might have kicked out led to a kickout and an easy jumper. So Boston played one of their best games of all year offensively. The one thing I didn't like, and it continued into the buck game. The three point shooting of the opposition, Boston was weak and they were giving up a lot of open threes. That's not a good thing and Boston needs to figure out how to fix that. They played a little better in a Raptor game at the three, but. They give up open threes, and that's a problem. The next game, though, was really interesting. He went to [00:05:00] the Milwaukee, Milwaukee fielding what I would consider a G League team to Prince was probably the best player, miles Turner played, but I don't know what happened to him. He's just not effective. The bucks don't defend at all. Boston won 1 33 to 1 0 1. But more importantly than not, they can shoot threes even. They've got a bunch of guys that can throw the threes in. They made 21. And that leads my back to what I was just talking about, giving up the three for Boston, not good. They need to improve that three point D. When they get to the playoffs, to the higher level playoffs, it's very important that they do. Boy, it wasn't, it just average, I'd say defensively. Milwaukee not a good team. JT had 23, 11 and nine. Boston was winning so big by the end of the third quarter, Tatum was on triple double watch and he kicked it right at the, right before the buzzer. He kicked the ball [00:06:00] to Pritchard for an open three, which would've given him the triple double, and Pritchard missed a shot at the buzzer. Tr Tatum and Brown sat out the fourth quarter, which is good at this point in the year. The most rest, the more rest they can get, the better they are. Tatum, 23, 11 9. JB had 26. Caden, 19 and 10. Here we go again, and clearly well in both, in with the heat and this game. The best bang on the floor. Now the heat game you got bam. Cada was better. And that's saying something again. I'll talk about that later, but it tells you where we are with him. Hauser continued his decent shooting with 13. White had 17 Pritchard, 16, and it was an easy win for Boston and it's something they need at this point in the year. Now, yesterday they played the Toronto Raptors, the Raptors Boston and it was an interesting game because Boston didn't shoot the ball well. In spite of not shooting the [00:07:00] ball well, they managed to win, and that's important as the playoffs go on. It was a tight game for three quarters. You sat there and said, are they gonna blow this one? But good teams. Good teams win these kind of games. And Boston went out in the fourth quarter and put 'em away with a run. They had a great fourth quarter. And they just, it took over 35, 24 in the fourth quarter and it gave, made the game a lot easier. Peyton Prichard was the key in the fourth quarter. He just went off he finished with 17. But I think he had two at half, so he really got it going in the fourth and the beginning of the fourth. And then Boston just went off of that. Nimi again, 18 and seven. But he had a couple big blocks that were really good. And he is a rim protector. That's what Boston needs, and he's getting good at it. Tatum 23 with 13 rebounds, seven assists. JB 26, 6 3 assists. The Raptors defended well in the first three quarters, fourth quarter broke down [00:08:00] for him and. The results show that it's a great win for Boston. It's a great win for Boston type of game. If you're good, you're gonna figure it out even though you're not shooting well, eight for 28, as I said, 29% from three, I said 28, I was wrong but the Boston Celtics, the good thing is they figured out how to win a game where they're not playing as well as they should, and that is the key in this thing. Cada just dominated over over Pearl. Pearl was like, he was not there. I think again I'm gonna mention more about him. The other thing I saw was that Joe Missoula is now beginning to use. Jordan Walsh more and less of UO for some reason. I don't know if that's a playoff sign or what, but Jordan Walsh in this game came up with a big steal in the third quarter when Boston was struggling. And then he hit a, a shot of three, three to help his game, but also [00:09:00] for Boston. And he's a shot in the arm when he plays and he's needed. So is Ugo, but it's hard to get minutes when you have such. You got two stars and a couple other people playing real well, so he didn't, they didn't didn't use UO until the last couple minutes of the game when everybody came out, but that's something we have to watch and see. But it looks like Missoula is looking at Walsh for the playoffs. Now, I wanted to talk about Cada. First of all, a message to Brad Seham. Sign him. He's got a contract next year, but give him two more years. He just gets better and he's the perfect big, he's become a rim protector. He can score, he's got a little bit of an offensive game that's coming out. What each time he plays I really, I'm impressed. I really think he, he deserves all the accolades he can get because he has become. A real good player on a good team, one of, probably one of the most improved guys in the NBA and [00:10:00] has a chance at that award. That's it for this week. And another good week. I hope you tune in to this and there every Monday thereafter to Celtic Chalk Talk. Thank you and take care.