SOUND OFF: Has Tatum Reached Top-3 Status?

Published Oct 27, 2024, 3:16 AM

The Celtics are 3-0 after coming up clutch Saturday night in Detroit. Tonight we take a comment from Derrick White's father, Richard White, on what he took from the win, another fan is already looking ahead to the Playoffs, and another says Jayson Tatum has reached top-3 status after another 37-point outburst. Let's dive into the win!

Hey, everyone, thanks for giving us a listen. After Boston's one twenty four to one eighteen win over the Pistons out in Detroit, listen before we get into tonight's episode, I've got to tell you tonight is the last time a sound Off episode will go out on the View from the Rafters podcast feed. So you need to go search for sound Off with the Boston Celtics on your favorite podcast platform click to subscribe to make sure that you get these episodes after every single game. So again, this is the last episode of sound Off that will go out on the View from the Rafters feed. You need to go subscribe to the sound Off with the Boston Celtics feed in order to get these episodes moving forward. So without further a dude, let's jump into tonight's episode after boston six point win to go three and oh on the season out in Detroit, sound Off with me, folks on the Boston Celtics going three and oh on the season for the third straight season under Joe Mazzulu. That's right, the man has coached three seasons and Boston has opened up the season three to zero in every single one of those campaigns, and tonight they did it a little bit differently than they did during the first two games of the season. The first two were blowouts, breezy wins at home against New York and then on the road against Washington. Tonight looked like it was going to be that again. However, Detroit battleback made it a difficult game and the Celtics pulled out the win down the stretch, in the clutch. And what stood out in this game to me is just the weapons that Boston has. I mean, over and over and over, you never know who was gonna make the big play for the Celtics, and we saw it during the final few minutes of this game. Multiple Celtics made critical plays for the Celtics to be able to win this game. First, it was Drew Holliday making back to back threes with about three and a half minutes left to turn a six point deficit into a tie game. Those two threes turned the moment him in the game and pretty much gave the Celtics the confidence and the comfort that they needed to get into the win column. And by the way, those were the only two baskets that Drew Howaday scored the entire night, so Detroit might not have been expecting him to make a big play, and let alone two of them in terms of scoring the basketball during the final few minutes after a rough forty five minutes that he played at the start of the game. But then he comes through at the end with those huge shots. Just goes to show you you never know who's going to make the big play for the Celtics. Now, on top of that, Jason Tatum a couple of huge buckets down the stretch, both of them coming out of the post. Now, the first wasn't necessarily a bucket because he wound up getting to the free throw line, but he posted up kind of like a low post mid post, took a couple dribbles, made a Kobe move, went into the fade away, got fouled, goes to the free throw line and makes two free throws to give the Celtics the lead, and then seconds later makes a extremely difficult turn around fade away jumper from just inside the three point line in the left corner to again give the Celtics some critical points down the stretch that helped them to grab this win. Those are some offensive plays from Drew Holliday and Jason Tatum at the other end of the court. Derek White logged three blocks in this game, and the last one of them was emphatic. It was game ceiling. It was incredible to watch live listen. If any of you watched this game, and even if you didn't, you're going to see it on social media. But if you're watching this game live, you saw this block and you throw your hands up on your head just wondering, how the hell does Derek White do it? How does he do this every single night, every single season, especially like that. This was against Kate Cunningham on a drive to the basket and Derek White wasn't even his defender. Derek White came over in help defense and he rose up with literal perfect timing, with perfect extension, perfect hand placement to block the shot away and play a role in the Celtics sealing this win during the final minutes of the game. So there's three players right there who made clutch plays down the stretch for the Celtics. Jalen Brown made some clutch free throws, Al Horford with some clutch passes. He didn't necessarily get the assists on those plays, but he played a role in the ball moving to Drew Holliday on both of those three pointers. All of these guys involved during the final minutes making critical plays, critical decisions for the Celtics to win this game. So yet again, just going back to what I was saying the weapons, it's just an endless onslaught of guys who the Celtics can throw with the opponent, who can win a game throughout. But tonight you could see during the first forty five minutes that tons of Celtics were making plays. Baydon Pritchard was making three pointers left and right during the first half. Luke Cornett had a solid nineteen minutes tonight, Xavier Tillman with a big three pointer, some critical defense, and a great assist in this game. And then obviously those are the three guys who came off the bench and the five starters. We basically already talked about all of them, So you just never know who's gonna come up clutch for the Celtics at any stage of the game. And listen, in order to win games in the NBA, you got to be able to win in different ways, and as we already talked about, the first couple wins this season were blowouts. Tonight it was much more of a challenge. The Celtics had to grind this out and figure out a way to secure this win during the clutch minutes at the end. So a great sign to see them be able to do that yet again this season. We saw it plenty last season, including during the NBA playoffs, but now we see it for the first time during the twenty twenty four to twenty five season. Now, the Celtics were on their heels for a good chunk of this game. It was a physical game. The refs kind of swallowed their whistles for a while, and as I said, Boston was up by twenty three points at one point in this game, and then all of a sudden, they're down by six heading into the final three or four minutes. They had to make clutch plays down the stretch, and they did, and they overcame that physicality, They overcame all of that all out effort that the Pistons were bringing to the table. So just great signs for Boston. I guarantee you Joe Mizoula's going into the locker room thinking, man, I love the fact that we had to win this way as opposed to winning by twenty twenty five points and just breezing our way into the winner circle. He loves it when his team has to find ways to win, and that's exactly what they had to do tonight in Detroit in order to go three to zero on the season. All Right, we got some questions and comments from our fans, one of which just happens to be Derek White's father. Our first comments coming in from Richard White, that is d White's father, and he gives his takeaway from this game. Then we're gonna go over to a comment from the Locke, who was already thinking about the NBA playoffs. We're only three games into the season. And then lastly, we're going to take a comment from Matt who chimes in on Jason Tatum's excellent start to this season. So let's start it up. The first one coming in from mister White, Richard White, on his takeaway from tonight's game. All Right, Richard White, our first time participant in the sound Off podcast. I appreciate you, Richard, Hope you're doing great and everyone. If you don't follow him on X his handle is Ramblin' rec thirty four. That's r A M B l I n WR ECK thirty four. Ramblin Reck thirty four. All right, his comment tonight says, first close game, trailed late, turned up defensive effort, made plays down the stretch. Some tells me that might be the speech that Joe Missoula gave in the locker room after this game because shock. Richard White is spot on with his commentary here. It was the first close game of the season and the Celtics were down by six during the final few minutes of the game, and they had to win it by getting stops and then making plays on offense. And the offense had gone cold. I think they went four to four plus minutes without scoring a point before those back to back three pointers from Drew Holiday. But it all starts on the defensive end. We've seen it at times last season. We've seen it actually at times this season even where the Celtics can just turn it up defensively, apply pressure and speed the opponent up. They did it a little bit tonight against the Pistons in order to force stops down the stretch. So they turned it up defensively, and then they made plays at the other end of the court. As we talked about the Drew Holliday three pointers, the Jason Tatum buckets making all the plays they needed to make in order to win this game. So, as always, Richard White spot on commentary. If you guys don't follow him, go follow him because he is poised, he is level headed, and he gives great commentary after every single game, including this one. So Richard, we appreciate you being a part of the show tonight. All right. Next up is the Locke who says this is why I say nobody can beat this team four out of seven when it matters. The Celtics are ten men deep and they're almost impossible to contain for forty eight minutes. The Pistons led after forty five, but they couldn't seal the deal. The lock hard to disagree with you here. I mean, the Celtics are only played eight men tonight. But remember Sam Hauser is out with an injury. He's back in Boston taking care of his back, getting treated for some back pain that he's had over the past week or so. Porzingis is obviously not in the lineup right now. He's still recovering from his offseason ankle surgery. So these two guys make the Celtics ten deep when they come back and get hold. It's all the guys who played in this game with a bench headlined by Peyton Pritchard, Xavier Tillman and Luke Cornett, and then you add Sam Hauser and Christaps Porzingis into that group. And by the way, that's not even touching into some of the younger guys who have contributed to this team. Nimias Cada just played sad Thursday night in DC and played really well with twelve points and seven rebounds and only thirteen plus minutes. We love what we saw out of Jordan wallsh during the preseason. So the Celtics are even more than ten deep. But if you want to look at a lineup that might be a playoff lineup, there's ten guys. There are ten deep. All of them can make plays, which kind of gets back to what I said at the open of the show tonight that there are just so many weapons on this team. It's easy to have a few good minutes against the Celtics. It's easy to have a lead at some point, maybe late in the fourth quarter. It is extremely difficult to be able to hold on to that lead against this Boston Celtics team who can come at you and just chop away in so many different ways. So to the Locks point, it's why he says he doesn't think anyone can beat this Celtics team four out of seven. Well, no team could beat them best out of five. Last year during the postseason. Celtics went sixteen to three during the postseason, never lost more than one game in any of the series that they played, So beating them four times out of seven, that's going to take a lot. And at this point of the seasons still early, and I think the lock not many people are thinking about the playoffs right now. I appreciate the fact that you are, but if we do want to talk about the playoffs, that are still seventy nine games away. I mean, if this team stays whole, if this team stays healthy, You're right, it is going to be extremely difficult to be able to outplay these guys, out execute them, outsmart them, out physical them, outshoot them, out defend them. It's going to be almost impossible. This Celtics team is just so deep, so talented, and so smart. I just don't know if I could see it happening, all right. Last one coming in tonight is Matt who says Tatum might be starting to enter top three NBA territory. He is lighting it up, and that might be an understatement, Matt. I mean another thirty seven points tonight. This is the second time in three games to open the season that Jason Tatum has gone off for thirty seven and in all three games this season, he has come out of the gates from the opening tip on Fire, fifteen points during the first quarter on opening Night, fourteen points during the first quarter on Thursday in DC, seventeen points during the first quarter tonight in Detroit, and then he winds up with thirty seven tonight on forty six percent shooting from the field, forty six percent shooting from long distance, in seven of nine from the free throw line. Right now, if you want to look at a season averages, with those two thirty seven point games sprinkled in with what I believe, it was a twenty five point game. Yes, it was a twenty five point game Saturday night, he is averaging thirty three points on fifty five percent shooting from the field, in forty nine percent shooting for three point range. I will repeat that. Through three games, Jason Tatum is averaging thirty three on fifty five percent shooting from the field, forty nine percent shooting from long range. Good luck to the other team trying to stop that. He just seems like he is even more comfortable this season and more confident, which is it's crazy for me to even say those words, because Jason Tatum is already a three time All NBA First Team performer. But it's what it looks like. I mean, the three point shot looks much cleaner, it's quicker. The release just looks much like there's much less motion in it. There's that there used to be that tiny little hitch. It's not there anymore. Tonight, he was posting up, he was driving to the basket, he was making shots from all over the field. And he's been doing it all season long so far through the first week. And on top of that, he's getting it done in other ways. He grabbed a couple of steals tonight, had a couple of assists. He's already had a double double with points and rebounds. He's already had a double double of the points and assists. So he's attacking teams not only with the ball in his hands and scoring, but he's finding other ways to significantly impact the game as well, all while being extremely efficient from the field. There are not many players in the league who can make that claim, and that number gets even smaller when you talk about players who can do that and also defend at an extremely high level at the other end of the court. Jason Tatum is that he is. That he has logged at least one block and at least one steal in two of the three games this season, and then the one where he didn't block a shot, he did grab a steel, So already four steals in two blocks through three games. He gets it done defensively, he always gets it done offensively, and offensively he looks even better this year. So top three is what we're claiming here, Matt, that Tatum is entering top three territory in the NBA. I mean, it's hard to argue with the way that he's playing right now now. Is this going to be maintained for an eighty two game season. We'll have to wait and see. But so far he has been the top of the top. You can't get much better than what Jason Tatum has been through the first few games of this season. And by the way, let me just remind everyone, through the First, I don't know, four ish years, four or five years of Jason Tatum's career, do you remember that there used to be this thought process that, Okay, Tatum always comes out of the gate slowly, but by December and January he always catches fire. Do you remember this? Because I remember this because I used to watch the numbers. He used to struggle a little bit out of the gates and really like heat up as the season went on and catch his rhythm during the second half and just dominate during the second half of the season. That is. But right now he's getting it done from the very start of the season, and it's hard to see a guy of his level, a guy of his acumen in his resume regressing. I think this is here to stay. And with that being said, it's hard to think that he is outside the top three and definitely not outside the top five in the NBA right now. So that's it for tonight's episode of Sound Off. After Boston's third straight win to open the season, they are three to zero for the third straight year under Joe Mizzoula. Tonight, it was a different type of win. They had to close this one out in the clutch, make clutch plays at both ends of the court during the final three minutes to come back from trailing by six points to the Detroit Pistons, who, by the way, played very hard, played very well. They got some talent on that team. Boston found a way to win. And now they head back to Boston with a perfect, undefeated three to zero record. And guess who they're gonna meet Monday night. It's Giannis, It's Dame, it is the Milwaukee Bucks coming to TD Garden for these two teams first matchup of the season. It's Monday night at seven point thirty and you're gonna have to tune in and watch. And please, after the game, reply to my tweet, send in your comments and see if we can get you to be a part of sound Off with the Boston Suffice. So thanks for listening and we'll see you all Monday night.