- 10 hours ago
WEEI Host and Reporter Justin Turpin joined the show to talk about the Celtics. The guys discussed the awkward Jaylen Brown/Jayson Tatum interaction on Tuesday night, the impressive play of Paul George, that the team needs some scorers to step up, how this is JT”s team now, and more.
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00:00Well, we have in studio, of course, one of our favorite in-studio guests.
00:04That would be Mr. Top-Tier Terp, Justin Turpin from WBI.com.
00:08And I want to start because he not only is on the Patriots beat and knows all things Patriots,
00:13but he's also right there top tier when it comes to your Boston Celtics.
00:18I don't know, Terp, if you saw this, but that Sixers-Celtics game is the highest rated game,
00:26like television ratings, non-opening day, non-Christmas, non-playoffs.
00:34It's the highest rated regular season game ever in the history of the NBA.
00:38The Jays have always moved the needle.
00:40There you go.
00:40I guess so.
00:41I guess so.
00:42It was so funny.
00:43And Scal gaslighted you on that yesterday, Rich.
00:46When he joined, he's like, what do you mean, Rich?
00:47You thought this game was interesting.
00:49Right.
00:49And I was like, are you crazy?
00:51That game had everything.
00:52Like, it's, you know, outside of the schoolhouse drama and stuff, just take that away.
00:57You know what?
00:58Even just take Jason and Jalen away, which is so impossible to do because it was such a massive part
01:02of it.
01:02The fact that you had Jason Tatum dunk on LeBron, you had two teams at the top of the East
01:08for East domination,
01:10like a bitter battle between these guys, the most exciting team in the 76ers to see how they're going to
01:15go,
01:15and a team that you don't know how they're going to be, and Paul George, of all people, ends up
01:19being the biggest star.
01:20Dude, it was everything you wanted.
01:21That game had everything, and I understand that it didn't have the fireworks that people might have been expecting
01:25between Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown, but that was never going to be the case.
01:29Clearly.
01:29It did, though.
01:30It did at the beginning.
01:31At the beginning, yeah.
01:32Like, the shrug off, which on Jalen's part, like, man, what are you doing?
01:35Like, spinning the ball?
01:36Like, that's so performative.
01:37Just dap him up.
01:38How many times do you think he's walked out to center court, and he's engaged with people that he doesn't
01:42necessarily like?
01:43And just gives him a dap and just moves on.
01:45There you go.
01:46Like, that could have ended everything.
01:47It's like, all right, well, there it is.
01:48It's over.
01:48They clearly don't like each other.
01:50Let's move on.
01:50And then he had to go and do that, and now that's been the conversation.
01:54There's a new angle of that moment that is awesome because it's a wider angle.
01:59And so he goes up, Jason Tatum, and he does this whole thing with Joel Embiid.
02:03He's high-fiving him, pulls him close, hey, hey, hey.
02:06And all there is between Jason Tatum and the scores table is Jalen Brown.
02:13That's it.
02:14It's, like, wide open, and he just goes walking right towards him.
02:18And as he's walking towards him, like, Jalen knows that Tatum's there.
02:22As he's walking towards him, that's when Jalen decides, I'm going to be the dude from the Harlem Globetrotters and
02:28spin this ball.
02:29It wasn't like he crept up on Jalen while he was doing it.
02:33Jalen saw Jason Tatum coming towards him and said, I'm going to do this.
02:38And then, of course, he bumbles it all over the place like a moron.
02:41I do give him some credit for at least just standing ten toes down.
02:44Like, he clearly hates him, doesn't really like the Celtics, and he's standing on it.
02:49I give him credit in that regard.
02:50But this whole thing could have just been extinguished if you just gave him a little tap, whatever it might
02:54have been.
02:56So, Terp, I know you've been a Paul George guy since the jump, but you even have to be impressed
03:02at how far he's come here in a short amount of time.
03:04Not only just, like, personally, but just regaining confidence of the fan base who all mocked him.
03:09I mean, I apologized.
03:09I hope others did as well.
03:11I apologize to you.
03:12Paul George has been great.
03:13Can he keep this up?
03:15I think he can when he's healthy.
03:16Again, it's just a perfect situation for him.
03:19Now, is it going to look like 36 points every night?
03:21Certainly not, but he already has two games scoring 35 or more.
03:25Like, he is capable of doing that any given night.
03:27I just don't think it's a consistent thing that the Celtics should or could rely on.
03:31I think they are going to need other shot makers to step up a little bit.
03:35I think Derek White and Peyton Pritchard are trending in the right direction.
03:38But I think, in some ways, the Paul George thing has been awesome.
03:41Like, you're getting so much out of him.
03:42He's setting the tone offensively with the way that he's been able to play off Jason Tatum.
03:46Defensively, he is the one that has led the charge of this defense forcing more turnovers,
03:50both on and off the ball.
03:52So, he's been great in that regard.
03:53But in some ways, you are kind of leaning on him a little bit too much,
03:57where you are going to need some other scorers besides Jason Tatum and Paul George to step up.
04:02Because those non-Tatum minutes have just been pretty close to disaster when Paul George isn't out there.
04:08Now, Terp, the way in which the Celtics won, man, do you think the way in which they won,
04:14shooting 45% from three, only going to the foul line five times,
04:18that you can win four out of seven games in the playoffs doing it that way?
04:23No, you're going to have to get to the free throw line more.
04:25I think that's kind of the perfect example of winning in the regular season
04:28and their style of play working over an 82-game sample size.
04:33When you're down to a seven-game sample size, it really changes things.
04:36So, I do worry about who can get to the free throw line for this team.
04:39I think you've seen Jason Tatum can do it.
04:41I don't think Paul George can necessarily do it consistently.
04:44That's a great point.
04:45Right.
04:45Like, who's the guy who's going to be physical enough to take it into the paint outside of him?
04:50Yeah, I mean, Derek White, just because he's so skilled at being able to draw a foul.
04:54But outside of that, that's a great question.
04:56You can't rely on Peyton Pritchard to be that guy.
04:58You can't rely on Sam Hauser to be that guy.
05:01You can't rely on any of the newbies.
05:03I mean, yet, they might develop into that type of player.
05:07But right now, I don't have any confidence that Jordan Walsh or Baylor Shireman's going to be that guy.
05:10Yeah, and even with Derek White, I mean, the most he's gotten to the free throw line as a member
05:14as a Celtic is 2.6 per game.
05:16Like, that's not enough for what they're going to need.
05:18And it's obvious.
05:19It's easier said than done just going to the rim.
05:21It's not something you can just put the ball on the floor and just like, oh, we're going to go
05:24create a shot at the rim.
05:25Like, that's not necessarily how it works.
05:26But I do worry about their ability to get to the free throw line outside of Jason Tatum.
05:30Okay.
05:30I noticed something the other day.
05:33And I want you to just let me know whether or not you've noticed the same thing.
05:38And that is that Jason Tatum seems to be more demonstrative this year than he has been.
05:44More emotion after he dunks on a guy.
05:48More, like, the whole thing with his eyes.
05:50Like, he just seems like he is way more, oh, man.
05:56Engaged.
05:57Animated.
05:58Engaged.
05:59Yeah.
05:59Than he's ever been before.
06:01Passionate.
06:01I would agree with that.
06:02I mean, it's hard not to.
06:03Like, I think this is the best version of Jason Tatum we've seen.
06:06Which is kind of crazy when you consider he's only played a little under 50 games since coming back from
06:11a torn Achilles.
06:11And history would suggest that guys don't necessarily find their footing as quickly as he had.
06:16So, he deserves a ton of credit for that.
06:18And, you know, what you're getting from him on both ends of the floor.
06:20Like, obviously, the scoring is going to be the scoring.
06:23That's just how – that's who Jason Tatum is.
06:25He's going to be scoring close to 30 at night.
06:27And when he does, it's kind of like ho-hum because he just does it so frequently.
06:30It's the passing.
06:31It's the rebounding.
06:32It's the defense.
06:32It's all that that he's bringing as well that has been super impressive.
06:35So, I agree with you that he definitely seems to be kind of more in – it's his team now.
06:40And he's taken on the reins of that, and I give him a lot of credit for it.
06:43All right.
06:44Now, the one downside.
06:45I don't think Mitchell Robinson, Rich, our dreams of that have come true just yet.
06:50Is Keita just a better player?
06:52I mean, he certainly is right now, right?
06:54He certainly is right now.
06:55I think there is still some more patience with Mitchell Robinson that's required.
06:59I mean, I thought he did some good things on this four-game road trip.
07:02It certainly wasn't perfect, as we saw in Toronto, where he doesn't really play in the second half.
07:05Was that because he was tired, or was that like, all right, let's sit you down.
07:08You're getting killed out here.
07:09And it wasn't a great matchup for him with the speed that Toronto plays with.
07:12But he's only played 11 games in the Celtics.
07:15I think there is some patience that's required, and they're asking him to do a lot more away from the
07:19rim than he was in New York,
07:20where when he was in New York, it's kind of just go to the dunker spot, set a pick-and
07:23-roll, and that's pretty much it.
07:24You don't really have to do anything else.
07:26There's just being a center for the Celtics.
07:28There's just so much that is involved with it, with the reads and how they play, that it takes some
07:33time to adjust.
07:33And he straight-up admitted that he wasn't in shape, that he doesn't play five-on-five over the offseason,
07:38and he's going to play himself into shape.
07:40So we had to kind of give it some time with Mitchell Robinson.
07:42I thought it started to trend in the right direction.
07:44He took a step back against Toronto.
07:46But I think there is just some patience required with him.
07:49Hey, Terb, I'm just curious what you thought just from the standpoint of Jalen Brown,
07:54how the game started, how it looked, the fouls, just the way he played.
08:00I mean, I think he was a minus 28, which is like the worst of anybody on the court that
08:04night.
08:04Were you surprised that after all that talk that he performed the way he did?
08:09Not at all.
08:10I think he just tried to do too much.
08:11He was pressing, and the Celtics took advantage of some of his weaknesses, namely the off-ball defense.
08:16If you look at the second half, how they were creating open looks was picking on his off-ball defense.
08:20So I think the Celtics knew the scouting report on Jalen Brown, as you'd expect them to,
08:24and I thought he just tried to do a little bit too much,
08:26where he was focused on winning the individual matchup against Jason Tatum more so than the team's success that night.
08:32So they used it to his advantage.
08:34And it is kind of funny that one of the biggest things that when they traded him,
08:39it was all about the on-off numbers and all that, and he finishes a minus 27, the worst in
08:42the game.
08:43It's like, oh, well, there you go.
08:44Can they win a playoff?
08:46I mean, can they win the playoffs with this team as constituted?
08:49It's really tough to figure out, because it just seems to me like if Tatum's not firing,
08:54I mean, Ted said it earlier, if you're not hitting all those threes, you know, things can turn pretty bad.
08:59We've seen that happen with Missoula ball before.
09:02With how great their offense has been, they have had trouble with physicality,
09:05and naturally, physicality is up in the postseason.
09:08So I do worry about that.
09:10I worry about the health, obviously.
09:11That's a big one with Paul George and Mitchell Robinson.
09:13But if those guys are healthy, I think you can win a round.
09:15It's just what goes on after that?
09:17What version of Derek White, Peyton Pritchard, do you get?
09:20Can you rely on those guys to score?
09:22Because you can't just rely on Jason Tatum and Paul George.
09:24It's true.
09:25They are relying on Paul a little bit too much right now, and he's been excellent for them,
09:29but they are going to need other people to step up more consistently.
09:32And that's the big question.
09:34Can they match the physicality in the playoffs, and can they get more reliable scoring
09:38from really up and down the roster instead of being so top-heavy?