Is tonight's Game 2 a must win??
Will the #Celtics bounce back and tie the series against #Knicks ??
What happened at halftime with the Kristaps Porzingis illness? Is KP good to go for Game 2? Celts insider Mego joins and has updates!
Will the #Celtics bounce back and tie the series against #Knicks ??
What happened at halftime with the Kristaps Porzingis illness? Is KP good to go for Game 2? Celts insider Mego joins and has updates!
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SportsTranscript
00:00about it hello how are you hello i'm doing well how are you guys this morning good which camp are
00:05you in this is an incredible celtics team and they are the defending champs and that was an
00:11anomaly or you find yourself a little bit concerned after the result on monday night
00:17um i mean i think you should be a little concerned when you go down 0-1 against the knicks who i
00:24think are an inferior team to the celtics talent wise but i'd be more in the former i think it's
00:29more of an anomaly if you look at them statistically i know everybody is focused on the three-point
00:34attempts if you compare that to the season opener when they attempted 61 three-point attempts and
00:41tied for the most three-pointers made in an nba regular season game it just goes to show you
00:48like we say live and die by the three-pointer sometimes you're gonna die by it just because
00:53it's not going in but even if they're good looks and they're not falling why not adjust i agree i
00:58think jalen brown courtney did an excellent job addressing this your guy after the game saying
01:04like we got to go back and review the film and we're gonna watch tape and everything but wouldn't
01:09have hurt to mix in a easy bucket inside here or there just to keep the momentum going in their
01:15direction when it was so apparent that the knicks were swinging it the other way but we talked a lot
01:21about this yesterday what is preventing jalen brown from doing that very thing you mean from the way
01:27that he usually takes it like running downhill to the hoop i don't know i think like my personal
01:34opinion watching that game was the celtics were moved so much off the three-point line by the orlando
01:40magics defense i wrote this in my column it's kind of like when if you have like corny like an almond mom
01:47or like a health nut parent and then you go to a sleepover as a kid and you get into a sleeve of
01:52oreos and you're like oh my god like i haven't gotten to shoot the three-pointer it really in
01:57five games and all of a sudden they left them open 56 of those 63 point attempts were open shots like
02:05they had at least four feet between them and the defender on average so i think they just saw those
02:11and go well they're gonna let us shoot these let's shoot them and obviously there should have been more
02:16of an adjustment in my opinion in that second half see the thing i i i felt the same way but when i did
02:22my lead this morning to find out that the majority of the guys on that team they shoot they shoot more
02:27than 50 of their shots are three-pointers you know and then you got guys like pritchard and derrick
02:33white that are up in the 70s that's what they do like i mean that's what it's like they don't know
02:38other any other way other than uh to play basketball than shooting threes and i think they fall back into
02:46well i don't really go to the hoop so if i'm getting an open look why would i pass that up
02:51well i don't know i think that there's like they they can always fall back on some of their pick and
02:57roll game that's been really effective through most of the regular season i also think like we are very
03:02focused on the three-pointers and that's fair and that's the onus that they put on themselves by
03:08making that their identity these last couple of years at the same time there were other factors
03:13going on in that game like you have christoph porzingis who disappears in the second quarter
03:18and is dealing with some kind of illness you have luke cornett picking up five fouls at the beginning of
03:24the fourth quarter so he has to sit and then you have al horford basically the only functional
03:28available big at that point in a very important part of the game so there's different stuff that was
03:35going on i don't think they're a completely one-dimensional team with the three-pointer
03:40i think that there were it was just kind of like a murphy's law in that second half in a lot of ways
03:46with when it comes to porzingis is this the same illness is this a different illness is this uh
03:54being out and enjoying the city of boston as some are suggesting like what who's suggesting that no i don't
04:00listen to what people say oh i'm like oh they're hot guys you know how people go they they send in
04:07report eyewitness accounts and whatever but i is um is this tied to the same thing he dealt with
04:14throughout the season so yesterday joe mazula said that he continues or has continued to
04:21deal with something that kept him out several games in march and april is he lactose intolerant i don't know
04:29okay because i i think i like i would guess you guys had the same read during the game he came out
04:34at halftime and he was shooting and he was clearly trying to get warm moving around fine and then he
04:41disappeared again and so i thought well maybe that's a stomach thing maybe he had a 24-hour bug but then
04:48yesterday first joe mazula's asked like i was there he's he's asked was this connected to the bronchial
04:57illness that he had the respiratory illness a couple weeks ago and he's like i have no idea
05:02and then later on in the press availability he said well he's been dealing with something so i
05:07don't know if it's necessarily connected if it is that's much more concerning than having a 24-hour
05:13bug or you know being out in the streets like wiggy getting after it so you see i don't think it
05:19i think it's more the 24-hour bug and the reason why is because in the first series there was no
05:24issue right if this is something that had been bothering him he didn't shoot well no no i'm not
05:29saying he he played well but he made it through the games like i remember the point in time where
05:34he points at the bench like as he's running up court and he's like you know like hey i need a blow or
05:41something like that i'm thinking all right maybe he's just tired and this was in the second quarter
05:44and then you didn't see him if there was an issue we might have solved that in the first series where
05:50he wasn't you know playing the whole game or this is how the regular season kind of played out with
05:56him like with this viral uh issue that he dealt with it was like he was in some games out others
06:02and it was this constant illness and with a viral situation like there are some things you can't just
06:07deal with with medicine and i i'm on i'm the opposite i think that it would be better with this
06:12than a 24-hour bug because you're around all those other guys who knows if somebody else gets something
06:16and then you have a whole team dealing with the bug so it doesn't seem like it was that why didn't
06:20it affect him in the first series if it was something that he had been dealing with right
06:24wouldn't it have still affected him where he might have missed the game or he left the game early which
06:29he did that's the only thing that i can say okay well maybe it's just a one-off because he didn't play
06:35well but at least he was there for every minute yeah never trust the fart yeah you gotta be careful
06:41you gotta be careful true words have never been said that's what they say um what about this
06:48argument that joe mazula was trying to run up the score and it backfired why because they were up 20
06:57and then they kept shooting threes yes again i think it's what they were being given and i do think that
07:04my opinion is there's a side of it where they were so thrilled to be giving me given the opportunity to
07:10shoot threes and win the way that they wanted to win i don't think that's running up the score i
07:15think that's probably just maybe playing a little analytically and saying this is what they're giving
07:20us this is the more valuable shot and so 19 out of 20 attempts in the third quarter field goal
07:27attempts being three pointers is too extreme for my personal taste okay like i'm not disagreeing with
07:32that but i don't think that's like becomes a running up the score thing is that a joe mazula issue
07:38though that it was that it all stems from the top and we know joe mazula likes threes that's his game
07:44is that a a mazula issue i think part of me just at this point like has a trouble condemning that
07:52approach because it got them the championship last year because it continues to bring them success and
07:58like i said screwed them two years ago though same approach on opening night and we're all praising like
08:04wow nobody can hang with the celtics i it's just one of these things where sometimes it goes your
08:09way and sometimes it doesn't i i do think that chris forsberg from nbc sports boston had an interesting
08:15point in a column that he wrote yesterday about how many of those jumpers how many of those threes
08:20were pull-up jumpers rather than the catch and shoot variety so there's also like there's a difference
08:25between the different three-point looks that you get we all know like certain angles are easier for
08:29most guys than others but when it's just like okay now it's my turn to pull up and go and your turn to
08:35pull up and go and you know it's almost like the ball gets this certain amount of stickiness right and
08:42you lose some of that flow of everybody getting a touch that's a different kind of three-point
08:48attempt than catch and shoot it's one thing to have the hockey pass that leads to the guy who's
08:52in the corner wide open for a three-point look versus whether it's tatum or brown as soon as you come
08:58out of the third quarter off the dribble pull up three-pointer because and also the contested
09:03fall away three to me is and there are times where they have the ball uh under the net basically and
09:10they're shooting it out for a three as opposed to get like getting fouled on a layup it's like basic
09:17but it's probably old man to say yeah it's like i don't think it's old man and i also think the other
09:21point with that greg is like they are waiting a little long and this is something they've been guilty of
09:26at times to get into their action in the shot clock like we don't need to see it brought up to
09:33the top of the key and look around pass to somebody but you get it back you dribble around like you're
09:39letting them get into whatever set that you guys want to run like you're letting the knicks basically
09:45set up and wait but also you could say that they were waiting they were not waiting long enough as
09:50the third and fourth quarter went on in game one because they were shooting the ball with more than
09:5410 12 seconds on the shot clock when you're up late in the game i think in some ways that there
10:00is a there's so there's a balance between like if you're shooting right away trying to get the
10:04two-for-one opportunity right and then waiting to get into your action that's at the end of the game
10:10curtis is right you know early in you know that third quarter the first possession out it you know
10:16wasn't even you know 15 seconds into the 24 uh uh clock and jaylen brown's hawking up a three and
10:24then it's like you'll see that you'll see tatum come down and just pull up rather than you know
10:28try to take as much time off the clock when you have that big lead to then say okay if we are going
10:33to put up the three but then no like all right they're not falling they're starting to cut into it
10:38because they started to go on like a 7-0 run a 9-0 run it's like all right maybe we should try to take
10:43them off their rhythm a little bit get some easier looks maybe get to the foul line and break up some
10:49yeah they only got to the line six times in the second half like that's kind of unacceptable especially
10:54when new york doubled that on the other side well that's what happens when you shoot 19 yeah 20 your
11:00field goals right three point land yeah um i i none of us i think agree with perk that this is a must-win
11:07game this evening uh but uh how important is it for jason tatum who is
11:13uh uh oftentimes looking for respect uh from everybody else um how important is it that he
11:21this game tonight is uh that that he is leading the charge here um you know i don't know if
11:28individually like i would look at it that way i understand we all want tatum to have this run of
11:34i or if you're a tatum fan you want him to get the finals mvp you want him to be talked about in the
11:41the same way that yokich and sga and even somebody like anthony edwards in that last first round game
11:47for the wolves are talked about like i get that i just think right now you're down a game in this
11:53series you gave up a game at home it's i would guess that for even for like tatum it's not about
11:59individual glory or being the guy who puts the team on his back it's about like you got to tie this
12:04up before you go out to new york and try to take but he is a guy that we would expect to be putting
12:09the team on his back that's what he wants us to expect from him i think yeah but at the same time
12:16like if somebody else like if it's a night where derrick white has better looks and is able to put
12:22up 30 and tatum puts up 24 i don't think tatum's looking at that as a failure of a night if they
12:29win no i think for fans it's more of we just want to see you at the end the games make that last shot
12:36like last night's game the pacers game uh tyrese halliburton doesn't play well the whole game you
12:42know he's not having a great night but what everybody remembers is the game winner at the end of the game
12:48what moronic fans to say that he was uh he's overrated chanting that he was overrated during
12:53that like you look like buffoons right but that's but that's what people remember they don't remember
12:59like even with the we talked about this in the celtics first game you don't really see jalen brunson
13:05not really playing well in the first half but once he makes play and that's why mr clutch yeah that's
13:11why he's considered he could have won that game for them right but he then in overtime he makes some
13:15shots or they are able to make some and win that game so they look at it like if if jason tatum
13:21hits that pull up jumper three with five seconds to go then we're like look at jason tatum right we
13:29all and that's where i think he has to well not he has to but people want to see more than anything
13:35definitely i think look the clutch shots are obviously the most exciting and we've had a ton
13:39of those opportunities so far in the nba playoffs which i don't know curtis i gotta ask you
13:45because i feel like you maybe i might be reading this wrong maybe you don't enjoy all of the nba
13:51games as much as i do do are you as high on the nba playoffs as i am i feel like they are much more
13:58exciting this year to fans than they have been in years past for the early rounds i think it's been the
14:04best product i've seen like i i've watched more non-celtic games this postseason than the last three
14:11combined i thought that the uh the the knicks detroit series was excellent i think the i it's
14:18been unbelievable they've let them play in clutch moments it seems much so happy but hasn't it been
14:23much more physical that game last night wiggy and i were talking about that game that was a great
14:26game to watch last and the ratings are up they're up i think ten percent after the at this point and
14:31i the product is awesome it's been so great and i just i it's been good because i i really
14:38really thought i don't know about you may go but when the celtics had that 20 point lead and they
14:42really weren't playing well i was like this is going to be the most boring series of all time
14:46and now i don't think they lose the series and but it's much more interesting today than it was
14:51you know 48 hours maybe it's a wake-up call for them i mean it's like we can't we can't take the
14:55knicks lightly you know and they got enough talent where if we take them lightly and our shots are not
15:01falling that they can you know steal a game and that's exactly what they did all right you still
15:06like the celtics in this i do i like them in five that's where i was even before the loss i thought
15:13honestly i like if i had mapped out the way this series went i would have thought that the loss would
15:18come tonight because sometimes we see that game two at home a little lagginess but they're gonna have
15:24to fight for it tonight and we'll see christoph spoorzingis is probable so again like you hope
15:31that it's a 24-hour bug or something not super long related to what he went through before and
15:37hey drew holliday looked awesome yeah so you got that you got that figured out you'll know tonight
15:42like what derrick white looks like if they're hitting shots from three-point land early like all right it
15:47could be a good night for them all right mego thank you we will talk to you again next week i'll see you
15:51you guys next week okay