Is Jayson Tatum an Early MVP Candidate? Boston Goes 4-0 and Nobody Saw It Coming | Celtic Chalk Talk

CCT-Nov1-2026 === Steve: [00:00:00] Hello again, and welcome to another week of "Celtic Chalk Talk." My name's Steve Purciello, lifelong Celtic fan go back to the Bill Russell days. Before I begin, I just wanna mention this, this podcast is part of a network of podcasts from The Peach Basket. Take a shot, listen to it. There's a lot of interesting pods. There's a lot of interesting articles on this, on the site. Wouldn't be a bad idea if you think this is good, listen to some other ones and see what you think about them. You'll be surprised, and it's a lot of talented people writing. And remember, we are a bunch of... We're not being paid, we're basketball fans. Various teams and various articles will appear. I work a little bit more on the Celtics, but there's different writers who cover other teams. Try it, you might like it Now, for the Celtics for the week, great week. They went 4-0, makes them 5-1 for the season. They played well. They showed some things. [00:01:00] They're good signs after that opening game loss to Detroit which we'll talk about with comparing the game with Orlando, mean- meaning when you lose a big lead and how you react. But before we get to that, let's go over the week. First thing was Monday night, the Celtics blew out the Chicago Bulls 134-99. Tatum had a great f-- a good first half with 23, seven, and six, and then Pritchard just went off in the third quarter. He finished with 28 seven for 10 from three. Just an incredible night. The defense was good. Paul George has got a great knack of defending off the ball. He gets his hands on things. He's just he's just a, a great defender and really a much better player than I ever thought he was. Tatum he's just, he's learning that, that one-footed little jumper from about 15 that's pretty effective. They... The Bulls play a different type game. They play a drive-and-kick game, and they shoot a lot of threes. Very difficult to defend, and if they're shooting well, it could [00:02:00] be a problem. Obviously, on this night, they were not shooting well, and that led to them just, just getting beaten pretty badly. The Celtics were sloppy in parts of the game in the third quarter. And Tatum, was-- They just didn't play and finish it off, and they did that again when they played the Bulls Friday night, which is something I'll be talking about in a minute. But i-i-i-it-- They could've played better, but they... Still, you can't complain when you win by 35 points. But it's just they go into this sloppy stretch that kind of wears you down when you watch it. But then the Celtics continued on. They beat, in a crazy game, they beat the Nets by a point in overtime, 125-1 24. Now, the game should've been won by Boston. With four seconds left, they win 'em by four. They miss a foul shot. On the rebound, Queta fouls somebody. It was a, a cheap call, and it was a silly play by Tata. Tata by Queta. They go down the other end. They make their foul shot. They make [00:03:00] their f- their foul shots, and Boston comes back, gets one point, so now it's a three-point game with about a second left. They throw the ball into Mikal Bridges. He hits a three. This is a rookie. He's got some character, and he can play. He hits a three to bring the game to overtime. So Boston had blown this. Now in overtime, the Nets had six points, and Bridges was the guy who was hitting the threes. Now Boston comes back foul shooting and makes it a, a one-point game with one second left Boston ball, or two seconds I believe. Throw it into Tatum. Tatum dribbles towards the center of the of the court, or towards the center, like the left side of the foul line, and goes up with a, a little jumper about a 15-footer, and he had gotten a step on his man, and he swished it. And Tatum in every game shows why he's should be a early candidate. It's too early to talk about it, but an early candidate for MVP. He just, he was [00:04:00] great. The Nets played well in that game and if they would've won that, it would've been important for their building. Boston won it. They're a better team, and they managed to figure it out at the end to show it Moving along, the Celtics played the Bulls for a second time on Friday night. Now that game, Boston just blew 'em out in the first half by 30, 32 or so. They had leads that big 28 at the half, playing great basketball. In the second half, it became a slog. They were just content. They wanted to get out of there. Tatum finished 26, seven and seven. Pritchard again, playing the Bulls, plays well. He got 30 points. And so it was just an easy win. The, the thing that I was thinking about watching the game is, are Scheierman, Walsh or Hugo, are they distinguishing themselves in any way? I I think Scheierman has his value. I think he can be better, but none of [00:05:00] them... Hugo's got his value. Walsh is a great defender, and he's not shooting great to start the year. But each of them have some value, but you're hoping that they take another step and become a solid player. That hasn't happened yet. We're hoping for it to happen. The other thing we're hoping that will happen is Mitchell Robinson will play as well as he did with the Knicks. He really hasn't played well. A lot of people attribute it to him not being in shape. And we'll see. If he does continue to improve, you might... that might be the answer. He has learned to become a good partner for Tatum on the alley-oop. So there is some positive, but he's just not as good. He had a chance to put the game away at the end of regulation when he went to the line with two shots, and he missed them both. And, I think Boston was winning by three at the time. They could've put the game away. He didn't make 'em, and of course, that helped hurt Boston and brought the game to overtime, which Boston managed to hold on. And then Sunday, [00:06:00] the Celtics beat Orlando 108-97. Now that was a good win. Why was it a good win? First of all, Orlando made a comeback. I believe it was 12 or 15-point lead the Celtics had. Orlando came back, tied it once, and then cut another lead to six in the end. But Boston showed it wasn't like the Detroit game Sam Hauser hit a big three after Boston hadn't scored. That was the only points Hauser scored the whole night. That was a big three. And then Tatum, who sat out about seven minutes, the first seven minutes of the fourth quarter, came in and hit two of those one-footed little 15-footers. And that really put Boston back in the lead. Paul George helped with a three and Boston managed to pull away and win by 11. The defense was great. In the fourth quarter they really shut down Orlando. Orlando shot only 42% from the floor. 42% is not real good. Now, [00:07:00] that made it five in a row. They play Houston tomorrow night, or Monday night rather and that's a big game. I don't know if Tatum will play. I don't know if Paul George will play. Mitchell Robinson did not play today, so he will be there tomorrow, and I don't know how they're gonna rest people. I think in the fourth quarter, Mazzulla tried to keep Tatum on the bench as long as he could. Boston had a 12-point lead, and then Orlando in two possessions in a row hit threes and cut it to six. That's when Tatum came in. And Boston managed to pull away with that in the last five minutes of the game. But they were hoping, I think, to get Tatum more rest in ca- for playing tomorrow night. Now, when we look at this team, they're five and one. They're winning the games they should, and they beat the Knicks. That's a good win. I kinda like the team. I think the biggest concern we should have is keeping Paul George healthy, as a team staying healthy, and I think one of the things I think [00:08:00] would be a good thing is if Mazzulla could take a look at one of Scheierman, González, or Walsh and let 'em play for a while, and let's see if they can begin to contribute on both ends of the floor. Each of them brings something different. One brings, Walsh brings tremendous defense, shot that's sketchy at best, although last year he shot 38 from three, 38%. Scheierman, he's just a good all-around player, but he's gotta step out and do one thing especially well. Hugo's a defender. I think Hugo's got a lot of potential, but he needs to play to, to be able to begin to realize that potential. But of the three, if we can get one of them to begin to help on both ends of the floor, Boston will be in business. They'll be in good shape, and they should really take off and they are taking off now. How good is this team? I don't know. I think they're really good. But I [00:09:00] think over time we'll find out as the competition gets stronger. Tomorrow tomorrow night with Houston is a biggie. It'll tell us something, although it's a back-to-back, and that's gonna be tough going to Houston and winning in that situation. But I think things are looking good, and this team is a lot better than we thought. Biggest thing is keep Paul George healthy at any extreme. The other thing I wanted to add is Luka Garza just continues to quietly be a solid or very good third center on a team. Tonight he had a couple big shots, and he did some things that kept Boston in and Luka is a guy that's overlooked often, but he's n- he's really helped the team. That's the end of this week's edition of "Celtic Chalk Talk." Please come back again next week. Talk to you then.