the third quarter. Welcome in to Celtics post game live scout Eddie House. I mean, Smith here with in the Celtics beating the next one 16 to one oh two and scout. We talked about this a half time. It was a dog fight between both of these teams. The next they would not lay down in this matchup. What did you see out of the Celtics to get the win? Third. The first one is the third quarter. The next eventually listen. I told you in the first half about the three that they made. Eventually they got ice cold. Eventually the talent discrepancy was too great. And we came out. We played harder defensively getting into people's airspace. And then we started knocking down threes. And for all you three point shooter haters or don't think that that's the way to win a championship. It's really about like the things that you do. You defend and you rebound. And you're low turnover. You shoot as many dreams as you want because ultimately you're going to get open shots in the town of this team. It's so superior to everybody else they play. Those other things are the only things that they can beat you. They took care of those things in that third quarter. The separation occurred and they coached all the weight in the fourth. Eddie, you're going to get a lot of money. Let me both of you guys notice, right? When they cut it to nine, right? I think it was 99 and 90. Remember when we used to be worried like. Yeah. Here we go again. We about to blow this. We don't have to worry about that no more because it seems like we do shift into another gear and it all starts with our defense. You know, we we get stops. We rebound. We close the possession out with a rebound. Then we go to a point where we're going to get a kick, you know, we're poor Zingas and Drew holiday. The Celtics are almost like a cheat code and the reason why he saying that because he knows basketball, how I know basketball, how scall knows how people that play is virtually impossible. If these guys are knocking down shots to stop the Boston Celtics and that's what happened. The spacing was impeccable. I talked about the ball movement and being in the corner. I think that's why we're not really defensively but against this team, your offensive disciplines are going to be challenged. Our spacing wasn't peckable. We took advantage of every mismatch that we had and we were able to swing the ball. How many wide open threes did we get? Whether it was poor Zingas, whether it was Drew holiday in the corner and then sometimes when the things is just flowing like that. Guys walk right into a three. I think that's the best to me that I've seen. Put on the floor in a long time and I don't want to say wouldn't the last time I seen that team. Be out there to one of the best Celtics team but this is one of the best Celtics teams. I've seen put out on the floor in a while and when we talk about legit chances to win a championship for sure. This is one of those days. And Scal, you mentioned that third quarter that Celtics outscore in the next 35 to 26. So for the Celtics in that third quarter in order for them to blow open this game. Yeah, I think you were just to kick up defensively. I thought there was another level and then you don't like the echo where Eddie was saying like a lot of time you focus on your defense. The other stuff just go and I thought the defense went up a level and then all of a sudden you can see like the spacing, the shooting and they just started really flowing and the mix ran out of talent. They just had it in the next five to six. And then the other team could not go to. And you know, you mentioned the talent and you don't have Julius Randall out there on the floor. You know, O. G. An and O. B. is also out with an elbow injury. Eddie, when you take a look at the Celtics winning this matchup, you know, is there maybe an asterisk around them because they don't have some of their heavy hitters on the floor. They bad. They ain't our bad. They bad. I mean, if we was out there limping out of the home, you got to get out there. You got to get healthy. It is what it is. And that's part of the whole. That's part of the grind of the NBA. And that's part of the journey of getting to a championship. It entails of, you know, talent being well coach, being together as a unit and health and a little bit of luck. And, you know, if the fact of the matter is we can't. We can't put in front of the home. Yeah, that that win. No, a no asterisk out here. No, it's as kicking. That's where we can't get. You know, you know, as tricks out here. We can see that. Yeah, I mean, I've heard it on a couple of show. I mean, I won't say it. You know, I didn't know the rules are different later. No. Yeah, well, yeah, I guess after the game, we have a game lead on the Cavaliers now after this win tonight against the next they have an eight game lead in the east and now an 11 game lead against the next obvious team they played tonight. Scowl. When you take a look at how the Celtics are planned right now, what separates them from the rest of these teams in the east? It's a pretty simple equation of defense and versatility. We have different guys that can bridge the lead. We have a guy there. We rebound at a high clip, right? So we just talked defense. Now, offensively, we space you. We drive elite decision makers and everyone on the team. All six guys at play can knock down shots drew holiday. Who mostly plays our low-dunker spot is leading the NBA in corner at three point shooting at over 64%. So you just have to search for weaknesses in this team and it's really hard to find them and when you go into a game and you're going against these other teams out there, they have 25 things they're trying to work on. We might have one or two things that we're trying to work on because that's how kind of complete this roster is made as bill. All right. So let's let's go back to the conversation we were having earlier when we were talking about Jason Tatum being a MVP, right? Okay. So people that would just be looking at the game. They're looking at the news paper or they look online, they'll look at whatever they want to look at the box for and they'll say only 19 points. But the fact that a matter is when I say that he's going to have to get to the MVP. It's going to be the separation that he has. The team his team success because what he's doing. I mean what superstar do you know? Only takes 15 shots in the game scale and still wins like this. So he's going to take a lot of shots for the most part of the guys that are the focal point of the offense. They're going to you're going to have to run every single thing through them whether it be picking roll, whether it's post, whatever it is, you got to run it through them. They're going to touch the ball a million times. Jason Tatum has the luxury where he doesn't have to do that. But he can still affect the game in many different ways rebounding assist is up and it's going to be a lot of things that he's going to do. He's going to pull in a way from everybody else. The higher he goes in the MVP voting.