Celtics Schedule UNVEILED | Did NBA Favor Boston Over Rivals?

Celtics Schedule UNVEILED | Did NBA Favor Boston Over Rivals?

The Celtics schedule is out. Where are the big games? Where are the pitfalls? I’ll talk about it right now on a bonus locked on Celtics podcast. Uh-huh. Yuck. Be ready. It’s the scene. Who else could it be? What they going to say now? Screaming like JT coral. We kept the madness every game, every practice. Prime time. Deon D White on the sideline. Raining Jace. How it started. Rais how we finish. Locked on Celtics part, home of the winners, baby. Hey there, welcome back to the Lockdown Celtics podcast right here on the Lockdown Podcast Network where it is your team every day. I got you covered every Monday through Friday normally. This is a Monday, Wednesday, Friday. This so this qualifies as a bonus podcast, I suppose, but whenever something happens for the Celtics, I will be here to podcast for you and hopefully give you a little added perspective. So, make sure you’re subscribed wherever you get your podcast. It’s free. It’s available everywhere. It’s on YouTube. Get into the comment section there. Share your thoughts with your fellow Celtics fans and me, John Carales. I’m a beatw writer covering the Celtics for Boston Sports Journal. I’ve been doing a version of this job for about 20 years now and I’ve written a couple of books about the Celtics. Today’s show is brought to you by FanDuel. Download the app. Football season is around the corner. You can start planning your futures bets now. So, the Celtics schedule is out and uh we’ll get into the national TV games, the toughest toughest stretches of the schedule, uh notable games. But honestly, right away, my first reaction to the schedule coming out, aside from everybody making the joke, Larry Bird, you know, 41 home, 41 away, like, okay, we’re in. Yeah, got it. Uh this is as I think straightforward a schedule as I’ve seen for a while. Last year they had that weird I think because of the Abu Dhabi uh preeason that they they didn’t want to schedule more travel too soon. So the Celtics had like a back end of the schedule. It was very roadheavy. Was it January that they they were just like crushed by road games. Two West Coast swings in rapid succession. So this season it’s it’s very kind of normal. They they have uh I think 13 backtobacks and honestly none of them are the crazy, you know, Boston, Miami, Toronto to, you know, uh New Orleans or those kind of like stupid ones, the Portland to Utah back to back, which is always a killer for teams that need to do that. Uh because it’s distance. Those distance plus time change plus things like altitude always killers. The Celtics backtobacks are easy. I mean look, I’ll just run through the back tobacks for you right now. First one road Detroit and New Orleans. That’s not that bad. Especially Detroit’s a 3:30 game. Then you play 8:00 the next day in New Orleans. I think in a time zone I think that’s a time zone zone change. Either way, it’s you’re going back. So then you’ve got uh Philly on the road and Houston at home. Easy. Philly to Boston. Easy. Another road Philly home to Memphis. That’s uh to to play Memphis. An easy backtoback. Two road games. Minnesota and Cleveland is a backtoback. That’s not so bad. Uh let’s get into December. Washington on the road. Home to play the Lakers on the fifth. You don’t want to play the Lakers on a backtoback. But hey, you know what? It’s Washington to Boston. Not that bad. Especially it’s now that’s a three-game and four night stretch, but again, not that bad. Home game against Miami, flight to Toronto. Okay, a little a little bit of a travel there. Again, you you see where I’m going with this? Next backtoback two home games. Next backtoback, Brooklyn, Chicago. Uh that brings us into February. Dallas, Houston, easy one. Uh Phoenix, Denver at the end of the month, not too bad. You’re going, you know, into altitude, but all things considered, Phoenix to to Denver could be a lot worse. Could be a lot worse. Uh March home game, and then you go to Milwaukee. Uh where’s the other backto-back there? Uh Charlotte and Atlanta both on the road. Easy one. April, New York on the road at New York home to play the Pelicans. Easy. So, all of the backtobacks are very doable. Now, you you got your three games in four nights and there’s a you know a five game and seven night stretch or a six game and nine night stretch in in, you know, at the end of October. But, but that stood out to me immediately. All of the backtobacks that the Celtics play are manageable. They’re not you’re not switching too many time zones. You’re not going too far. You know, a couple of those the one home you go to Toronto for the next night. It it’s it’s okay, right? There’s always going to be if in a in a backto-back, there’s always going to be one where you’re like, well, I’d rather not do that. But they’re all totally manageable. So, uh, kudos to, you know, the schedule makers for that. Uh, I I think the Celtics have like look, tough stretches for sure, which I’ll get to in the next segment, but it it’s it really stands out to me that aside from the same types of things that every other team faces, it’s, you know, you have your every other nights, there’s no one month that stands out like, oh my god, how are they going to get through January? Remember last year when I did this podcast it was like oh man this this is going to be a month when you get through this month that’s going to be you’re talking about battle tested. So uh that to me does not exist. What are the notable games? Let’s come back. We’ll do the notable games. We’ll do the toughest stretches uh of the schedule uh when I come back. Today’s show is brought to you by FanDuel August 26. Put that on your schedule. It’s officially FanDuel Futures Day. A brand new holiday for football fans to live uh who live for bold predictions and preseason hunches for gut. For just 24 hours, FanDuel is giving you deals on NFL season predictions. So whether you’re calling your MVP eyeing a long shot division winner or ready to crown your Super Bowl champ a week before uh right before week one even kicks off, this is your moment. So if you want to take a flyer on the MVP race, go for it. If you want to crown your champion in August, do it. Or you can parlay your division winner dark horses. I know I’m I’m around here. People are, you know, I don’t want to say excited for the Patriots, but there’s there’s good vibes. There’s good vibes. Maybe there’s something futures-wise that you can bet on the Patriots that maybe, maybe, I don’t know, maybe they’ll surprise people. Visit the FanDuel app today and start planning your futures bets now. Make sure you use the tools. As soon as you log on, it’ll tell you set your limit, set your budget. This way, you don’t have to, you know, you it helps you stay under control. We get it. It’s, you know, sometimes you hit a a losing streak or maybe a hot streak and you want to keep rolling. If you if you had a rough stretch, the app will help you just be like, “Okay, calm down. We’re we’ll we’ll pick this back up a little bit later on.” So, but whatever it is that you want to do, go ahead and do it with responsibility. Futures day is one day and one day only on August 26th. FanDuel, play your game. Thank you for making Lockdown Celtics your first listen every day. More schedule breakdown on the Lockdown NBA podcast. I’m going to be joining Jake Madison in a little bit uh talking about the NBA schedule, the bigger games, the bigger marquee matchups. So, go check that out. Locked on NBA, two podcasts on that feed. So, make locked on Celtics your first listen and go check those out. You got something for the drive to work, your lunch, and your drive home. We’ve got you covered on Locked On. So, uh let’s take a look at some of the notable games. The notable home games, uh I I just look at about 10 of them. Uh the home games, November 1st, Houston Rockets, uh Eime Udoka, it’s always a thing and the Rockets are good and you get Kevin Durant. So, uh that’ll be that’ll be nice to see uh KD, nice to see Eay and all that. The Lakers, like I said before, December 5th, that’s a December 5th. It’s on the backto back. You’ve got LeBron, uh Luca. Interestingly enough, the Celt when the NBA does their rivalry week, the NBA is doing this whole thing now, they want to classify all this stuff, everything has to have a week now and all that, whatever. Okay, fine. Fine. I’m not going to rail against it. Uh, Celtics Lakers does not fall on rivalry week. The Celtics do not play in rivalry week. So, that’s um that’s an interesting kind of omission again. But you like talked about the Celtics schedule with with Tom the it’s very obvious like the Celtics have like uh 25 national TV games. It’s the eighth most in the league. It’s the the bottom third uh of the top tier, right? It’s the it’s it’s the bottom of the top third is what I’m saying. So they’re in the top 33% of teams on national TV, but they’re not the, you know, at the top if you know what I mean. So uh Celtics Lakers is just not going to have the same kind of juice this year. If you want to see Nicole Joic, that’s January 7th in Boston. January 10th is Victor Webinama in the Spurs. Interesting. Jul January 26th and 28th. So consecutive games for the Celtics. The 26th is Holiday, Drew Holiday in the Trailblazers. And then two the next game, the very next home game, Atlanta Hawks, Kristoffs Porzingis. So it’s going to be like welcome back everybody. It’s nostalgia week for the Celtics. If you want to go see either of those guys, January 26, 28th, Jansen Tentacoup comes on February 1st. March 6 is your first chance to see Cooper flag and the you know uh at least at home. You get the Warriors on March 18th and March 25th the OKC Thunder is it’s your first chance your only chance to see the Thunder in town. So that stuff happens late. The potential I don’t know Al Horford everybody’s assuming he’s going to the Warriors but uh that’s not done yet. So, um, those are your notable home games and hopefully there’s a a return for Al Horford there. Season opening game, Philadelphia on the 22nd of October. I like this part of the schedule because, uh, preseason games, you have Memphis and Toronto on the road uh, October 8th and 10th. Then the Celtics come home, Cleveland on the 12th, two days off, Toronto on the 15th, then a week off, Philadelphia at home. So, they’re home for a week and a half. So, you got a lot of practice time. This Celtics team is going to need a lot of practice time. Uh, so that’s good. I’m glad to see that. Philly is kind of a soft opponent right away. So, you hopefully there’s an opening night win. This gets tough pretty quickly though. So, the when we talk about tough stretches, this is one right here. Philly at home, then one day off, and you have this stretch of Knicks on the road, one day off, Pistons and New Orleans. That’s your backtoback. So, you’ve got a three in4 nights, but then you’ve got Cleveland at home. you come back for one of those home games, you know, like a road game at home, we like to call it, because you have three games on the road, you come home, you play one game at home, and then you’re back out and and it’s only Philly on the next game, but you don’t really have time to unpack. You have basically time to come in, drop some stuff off, and then you’re out again, you know, a couple of days later. So, uh, and then it’s a Philly Houston backtoback. So it’s Philly in Philadelphia Friday the 31st and then November 1st, Houston at home at 8:00. So that whole week it’s a backtoback day off home game day off backtoback and a backto-back with you know some you know travel home. So what five games in seven nights you want to go to six games in nine nights if you go back to that New York game there. There’s the potential for a lot of losses in there. They could win that home game against Philly and then you go loss to New York, maybe a loss to Detroit, Pelicans up in the air. Let’s just maybe a win, but lost to Cleveland, Philly. Uh, you know, maybe you’re already tired at that point. Houston’s, you know, you can kind of peg a loss there. So that it there’s uh two or three wins there. Um the Celtics right around 500 I think heading into November. So that’s the that’s your first like really tough stretch for the Celtics. Uh then things kind of calm down a little bit. Utah, Washington, uh at home, those are bad teams. Maybe you can get a couple of wins under your belt. You go out to Orlando for a couple of day, you know, two games in Orlando, the Philly, Memphis, you know, at Philly, back home for Memphis backtoback. A lot of games against Philly right away. This is another interesting. The Celtics will have played three games against the Philadelphia 76ers in the first three weeks of the schedule. And then when’s the next time they play Philadelphia? I don’t even see them on the schedule again until March 1st. So, there’s a little quirk in the schedule. Celtics play like Philly, couple of games, Philly again, couple of games, Philly again, and then months without seeing Philadelphia, and then they get them one more time in March. So, that’s a weird a weird little quirk. You want to get all of your Sixers, venom, hate, all of that stuff out of the way. Now, who knows what’s going to happen with the uh NBA Cup. There’s also the potential to see Philly again somewhere in that mix uh because there’s a a week in December where they don’t have anything scheduled necessarily. You got to have a couple of home games there. That’s going to be a lot of downtime in December because it’s a whole week. So, that’s a chance to rest up, get your, you know, reassess. It’s going to be a good kind of you’ve had a a month and a half of games. The Celtics are really trying to figure out who do you start, who comes off the bench, all of that. Who, you know, what combinations work together. This is a great opportunity to kind of reassess, say, okay, we’ve got a lot of time, a lot of practice time, a lot of film time. Let’s get it together. We’ve made our notes. Let’s make some adjustments. that stretch out of that little NBA Cup knockout round, Miami, Toronto, Indie, and then a road trip. Uh, that’s that’s where we might see, you know, a few changes. So, keep that in mind. This is another tough stretch here. This road trip, the end of December, first of all, no Christmas Day game. They have the 23rd, 24th, and 25th off. So, plan your Christmas parties, plan your, you know, you’ve got plenty. You don’t have to worry about a Christmas Eve thing. You don’t have to none of that stuff. The Celtics will be off. You will be home. You will not have to pay attention to anything else. I get to spend some time with my family. I don’t have to worry about, you know, Christmas Day games. It’s going to be a lot of fun. So, uh, you got your Christmas Eve, your Christmas day off if you celebrate. So, but then this road, this is going to be the longest road, uh, trip of the season where they start off in Indiana, then you go to Portland, day off. Utah day off. Um Sacramento, I mean, yes, there is a day off there. Sacramento day off, Clippers, and then you come home for four games. Um that’s going to be a tough that’s going to be a tough stretch. You know, uh even though there’s a chance for some wins here. This could be a chance to pile up some wins. You got Miami, eh, who knows? Again, now Boston’s not going to be great. So, I’m not pegging these as automatic wins, but winnable games here. Miami at home, Toronto on the backtoback, both winnable potentially. Indiana twice with three days off. There’s a lot of rest time. Indiana twice. Portland, Utah, Sacramento, uh, all winnable games. The Clippers maybe, I don’t know what the Clippers are going to be, but maybe. So, maybe the Celtics can at the end of December. you’ve got a lot of rest, a lot of film time, a lot of time at home. This is a great opportunity to kind of like readjust a few things and go up against some lesser competition and may maybe you go on a little bit of a win streak because there are losing streaks. Uh there are losing streaks on this schedule and I think uh coming out of the All-Star break is definitely there’s room for one there. Uh we’ll we’ll get to that and we’ll get to some of the national TV stuff uh when we come back. Thanks for making Lockdown Celtics your first listen every day. Again, we are on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule through the first week of September. Then we go back to 5 days a week. Become an Everydayer. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast. It’s free. It’s available everywhere. or it’s on YouTube. So, please, I love the everydayers, just people who you’re in the habit. Wake up, there’s a podcast there for you. Boom. And and maybe you don’t expect one, but if you subscribe, it shows up. You’re like, “Ah, okay. I am going to listen to this.” So, uh I do think the Celtics like I Nothing about this schedule makes me think they’re going to be a better than 500 team. I I think they are probably a 40- win team if they if they win 40 or more games, especially if they become a 500 team or better. Obviously, this depends on the moves that Brad Stevens makes. But I I think your expectation should be 40 wins at the most, which means 37 38. Okay. 4142. Woo. Okay. Yeah. If they can get to 42 wins with this roster with significant holes in the front court, if they can if they can get to 42 500 or above, consider that a very successful season. So, but there are stretches in this in this schedule where you’re like, okay, I can see I can see, you know, a four, five game losing streak happening here. Uh the All-Star break is going to be uh you know an interesting one. You come out of it, you got Golden State, the Lakers, Phoenix, who’s going to be a mess, but Denver, uh you come home to face Brooklyn, you have Philly, Milwaukee, Charlotte, Dallas, like uh this this every other game stretch, there’s there are there are I think losing streaks some, you know, buried in every one of these weeks or or months of the schedule. So, coming out of the All-Star break, I’m not exactly confident in in how that’s going to go. Uh, the national TV schedule, the Celtics, I said, are on like 25 25 national TV games. Uh, this is how it’s going to work. You’ve got Amazon Prime that’s now a player. You got Peacock, which is now a player. Uh, so on Sundays all season long, okay, Monday’s games are gonna the national TV games, the Celtics play a national TV game on Monday. It’s on Peacock. On Tuesday, it’s on NBC or Peacock or both. Uh, Wednesdays on ESPN, Fridays are on Prime Video. Uh, you have additionally Thursday Prime Video games that are going to be uh starting in the middle of the season. ABC ESPN Prime Video Saturdays and ABC ESPN Peacock on Sundays starting in the middle of the season. So, all of this is to say, if you want to watch the Celtics, if you are so inclined, you probably want to get the Peacock app, you probably want to get Amazon Prime, um, or get somebody’s passwords for those things. Um, but yeah, that’s that’s uh a a a new kind of wrinkle to all of this. So, the Celtics um are going to be uh on Prime on October 24th, ESPN on the 29th. So, on Prime, uh, it’s Celtics Knicks on Friday the 24th, Cleveland at Boston on ESPN the 29th, Celtics at Philly on Prime on October 31st, Celtics at Philly again on NBC Peacock on November 11th, Detroit at Boston 5:00 ESPN on November 26th, New York at Boston, NBC Peacock on December Second, Lakers at Boston on Amazon Prime on December 5th. That’s where you’re going to want your Prime. Uh Celtics at Indiana on Prime on the 26th of December. January 12th, Boston at Indiana on Peacock. January 19th, Boston at Detroit on NBC/Pacock. Portland at Boston on at uh on January 26 on Peacock. Lots of games on Peacock, folks. Got to get that app. Milwaukee at Boston on ESPN on February 1st. Celtics at Dallas. NBC Peacock. February 3rd. February 8th. New York at Boston. ABC. Finally, an ABC game. Normal TV. Uh February 19th, Boston at Golden State. Amazon Prime. Sunday the February 22nd, Celtics out Lakers. NBC Peacock. February 25th, Celtics out Denver. ESPN. The good thing here is there’s not a lot of ESPN games, so you’re not going to have to worry about those announcers and those super late crazy starts. Um, March 2nd, Celtics at Mo Milwaukee on Peacock. March 6th, Dallas, you want Cooper Flag. Dallas at Boston on ESPN. March 8th, Boston at Cleveland on ABC. March 12th, Celtics at OKC on Prime. March 16th, Suns at Boston on Peacock, Warriors at Boston, March 18th on ESPN, Timberwolves on the 22nd uh on NBC Peacock, and finally Celtics at New York, Mar April 9th on Prime. It was a very boring list, but I had to I had to make sure I was saying all of the places they are so you had an understanding. Lots of Prime, lots of Peacock, lots of all of that stuff. So, you have a choice. Like me, you could just like not watch those games and rely on the podcast. I’ll be here postgame for all of them. I have to I have to subscribe to all of that stuff, which I’m already subscribed to everything because you put one show on one thing and another show on another. And it’s it anyway, I’m not going to get into the whole thing about how cutting the cords began become more expensive than cable. It was supposed to be cheaper. But anyway, um, if you want all of the Celtics coverage, if you want all the Celtics games, you’re going to have to subscribe to a couple of things, which is annoying. It’s an annoying bit here. But, okay, ultimately for the Celtics schedule, like I said, straightforward, there will be plenty of threeame, four game, maybe a fivegame losing streak in there. I don’t think the Celtics are going to be very good. If Jaylen Brown or Derek White miss any significant time with any kind of injury, it’s going to get worse. So, uh, looking at the schedule though, it’s almost a shame that this year’s team gets this kind of schedule. I wish last year’s team got this schedule. So, there it’s just so it’s so evened out. There’s no there there’s no crazy thing on there. I would have loved last year’s team to have this. It would have been easier for them, I think. in in the last in this year’s team. Throw whatever you want at. I don’t care. Throw throw 20 road games in a row. Give them the San Antonio Spurs road rodeo road trip. Do that. I don’t care about that for this year’s teams. They’re not going to be great. So, who cares if they the schedule kind of goes against them. Uh I saw a thing that I don’t know how true this is, but I saw a thing where the Celtics currently have like the easiest strength of schedule when it comes to the SK the you know, I don’t know based on last year’s records. I don’t know how that translates, but I I agree that this year’s schedule, there’s nothing on the schedule that makes me think that you can blame like, oh, okay. Well, there there are some schedule losses, I’m sure, just like every team, every schedule. But this is as generic, straightforward as a schedule gets. All right, bonus podcast here. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for watching. Tomorrow, flashcard Friday. Here’s the thing. because I’m posting this on the middle of the day on Thursday. I’m going to post the Friday show in the middle of the day on Friday. So, if you probably listened to this, if you are on your normal podcast schedule, this will be the podcast that you listen to on your way to work. But wait, on your way back, there’ll be another podcast because I’ll post this one, you know, I’ll post a flash card Friday with me and Tom kind of like in the middle of the afternoon. So, that’s the schedule. Another podcast coming. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for watching. Thank you for commenting in the YouTube section uh comment section. That’s awesome. I love to see you do that. Then I would love to see you share the podcast. Tell everybody they should be listening to and watching the Lockdown Sultics podcast. Here on the Lockdown Podcast Network, it’s your team every day.

CELTICS SCHEDULE REVEALED: Key matchups and challenges ahead

The Boston Celtics’ 2023-24 NBA schedule is out, and it’s surprisingly straightforward. Host John Karalis breaks down the 13 back-to-back games, highlighting their manageable nature. He analyzes crucial home games, including matchups against Ime Udoka’s Rockets and star-studded teams featuring LeBron, Luka, and Nikola Jokić. Karalis examines potential tough stretches, like a grueling five-game run in early November and a challenging road trip in late December. The national TV schedule and its impact on viewing options are dissected, with 25 games spread across various platforms.

Tune in for expert insights on how this schedule might shape the Celtics’ season and what fans can expect from their revamped roster.

1:30 Intro: Celtics schedule released
2:33 Back-to-backs are manageable this season
8:42 Notable home games for Celtics
13:19 Tough early season stretch for Boston
16:25 No Christmas Day game, long road trip
20:34 National TV schedule breakdown
25:45 Schedule is straightforward, no crazy stretches

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Locked On Celtics is a daily Boston Celtics podcast by Boston Sports Journal beat writer John Karalis. It’s an inside look at the C’s from a former professional basketball player who is at practices & games.

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