Tag: Terry Rozier

Denning: LaMelo Ball’s Hornets “Worth the Price of Admission”

November 17, 2021 / Aaron Fischman / 0 Comments

About a month into the 2021-22 NBA season, Miles Bridges is one of the leading candidates for the Most Improved Player award (Instagram/@Hornets).

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | RSS

In Year 2 of 20-year-old point guard LaMelo Ball’s NBA career, the Charlotte Hornets are playing with one of the league’s fastest paces while managing to score efficiently. Their successful high-octane offense has provided a breath of fresh air, although their defense ranks among the league worst and they’ve been plagued by long scoring droughts as well as other types of inconsistency. As a result, despite notable improvement from Ball and forward Miles Bridges and a healthy start from Gordon Hayward (not to mention his reliable production), the Hornets sit just a game above .500. Nick Denning, former editor at SB Nation’s At the Hive, breaks down what to expect from this enigmatic team that began 4-1 with three road wins, then dropped six of seven and has since won three straight, including a Sunday night victory over the then-11-1 Warriors. What can we make of this team? Nick will guide us through as we aim to determine that.

7:25-8:07: “Their offense, that’s why people watch them. It’s just how good they are offensively, it’s all the weapons they have, it’s the instinctiveness that LaMelo and others play with. He starts it, but everybody feeds off it, and head coach Borrego really allows that instinctiveness. That’s what’s gonna keep them in games, and then those nights when they can play well enough defensively are gonna be the nights where they can pull off some wins and maybe beat some teams that they don’t really have any business beating.”

13:26-14:02: “You’re aware of just how underwhelming the Hornets have been for much of their existence, so to have a player like him, just for what he does alone, it’s worth the price of admission. It’s worth planning your evenings around watching him Continue reading

Tom Westerholm: Giannis Will “Have to Work for Every Bucket” (Celtics-Bucks)

May 2, 2019 / Aaron Fischman / 0 Comments

OTNB guest Tom Westerholm chats with Jayson Tatum prior to Boston’s Game 4 in Indiana (Keith Sliney/Boston Celtics).

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | RSS

The Boston Celtics stole Game 1 in Milwaukee before the mighty Bucks answered Tuesday with a comfortable victory of their own. With the series all squared up and storylines aplenty, Tom Westerholm of MassLive delves into this fun matchup, which pits Milwaukee and Boston against each other for the second straight postseason. Only, this time, Milwaukee is coming off a 60-win season and the Celtics are able to suit up Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward. The Celtics severely limited MVP candidate Giannis Antetokounmpo in Game 1, but he responded with a strong performance in Game 2. How can Boston hope to corral the Greek Freak, and so many more questions answered inside.

Some noteworthy excerpts (*Particular time stamps may vary due to dynamic advertising):
3:54-4:57: “This is a strategy that they’ve employed against Giannis, basically all through last year’s playoffs – let Al Horford guard him one-on-one and then everybody else can get out to shooters. It really hammers home how good Horford is at defending that he was able to do that and that he is able to do that, because every once in a while in this series you see Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown, guys who are not small necessarily, get switched onto Giannis and he just blows by them and gets a dunk. It’s replicable just because the Celtics have a guy like Horford, who is as good at defending as he is and who is strong and able to move his feet and able to stay in front…Giannis is going to have a difficult series. He’s gonna have to work for every bucket, every free throw he gets. As much as the Celtics can hope for a win in this series, that’s gonna be what it rests on.”

11:43-12:26: “One of the things to keep in mind with this Celtics team is they do sort of have these stretches, and then sometimes during the regular season that would lead toward finger-pointing, that would lead to guys kind of getting upset with one another, and then that would really snowball, and then you’re talking about a few losses in a row and things can go badly at that point for them. I will say, though, in the locker room everybody was pretty accountable. There wasn’t a lot of, ‘Oh, the young guys needed to do this,’…It was more like Marcus Morris said they need to be setting better screens for Kyrie, and Kyrie said, ‘I need to be better at X, Y and Z.’” Continue reading

Wizards Must Overcome Road Woes to Advance, Featuring Chase Hughes & Michael Pina

May 12, 2017 / Aaron Fischman / 0 Comments

The Celtics and Wizards won’t be friends any time soon, but they certainly have produced one memorable postseason series (Keith Allison/Creative Commons).

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | RSS

Chase Hughes of Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic and Vice Sports’ Michael Pina (also host of The Big Three Podcast) deliver back-to-back interviews in which they delve deeply into the captivating Eastern Conference semifinal series between the Washington Wizards and Boston Celtics. While the Celtics lead 3-2, the home team has won every single game of the series. No love between the teams has been lost either.

Wednesday was a crazy day for D.C. sports fans as the Washington Capitals hosted a Game 7 in which they fell to the Penguins, sending the Caps home early for yet another summer. Also in the nation’s capital, the talented Nationals roared back from four runs down to defeat the Beltway rival Orioles on a walk-off single. That same night, the Wizards lost a one-sided road Game 5 to the Celtics. As the series shifts back to D.C., the Wizards hope to keep their home magic alive just long enough to get one more crack at that elusive road victory in a decisive Game 7. Our guests expertly detail what to look for the remainder of the series, beginning with Chase Hughes who is followed by Michael Pina in the final segment. Continue reading

John Karalis: Coach Brad “Stevens’ (Preparation) Is at Another Level” for Celtics

December 30, 2015 / Loren Chen / 0 Comments

John Karalis (right) alongside the statue of Bill Russell in Boston’s City Hall Plaza

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | RSS

Danny Ainge and the youthful Boston Celtics are a fascinating study in team-building. On this week’s exhilarating interview episode, Loren is solo with Red’s Army’s John Karalis for a discussion of the Leprechauns’ current and future. Are they contenders or pretenders in the East? Among a number of topics, John explores in great detail the emergence of Jae Crowder, Isaiah Thomas’ adjustment to his starting role, team synergy and Brad Stevens’ superb coaching. Delectable sound bites can be found below:

3:38-4:13: “I still worry about them in the playoffs. I don’t think they have the type of makeup that will be a very successful playoff team, because rotations shrink, the game slows…it just becomes about talent overcoming other talent. So they’ve got enough to win a first-round series. I wonder how they’ll do in the later rounds, because they don’t have that one takeover guy.”

4:17-4:54: “When Isaiah Thomas gets into hero mode, then the Celtics tend to have a little bit of a problem. It’s his greatest strength but his greatest weakness, because it’s that chip on his shoulder that makes him play so well at his size with his flaws, but when the game gets down to the last couple of minutes and the Celtics are down two or three, sometimes I think he plays a little outside of himself…and eliminates the ball movement that makes the Celtics so good.”

Tag: Terry Rozier

Denning: LaMelo Ball’s Hornets “Worth the Price of Admission”

Tom Westerholm: Giannis Will “Have to Work for Every Bucket” (Celtics-Bucks)

Wizards Must Overcome Road Woes to Advance, Featuring Chase Hughes & Michael Pina

John Karalis: Coach Brad “Stevens’ (Preparation) Is at Another Level” for Celtics

On The NBA Beat

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories