Picks 'n Pops: Panic, betting, and soul-snatching dunks

Every week I gather some thoughts about the Celtics, the NBA, and beyond and dump them here. Because I wanted to give you all something to remember me by if I don't survive a Friday night out in New Orleans

- Reading through the comments of my piece last night and I was right on the money … it's going to be a rough couple of weeks.

- I did say multiple times that the Celtics were going to use this time to work on things. I don't know what you expected that to look like. Sometimes you have to let guys fail. The Celtics had two late-game “need a bucket” situations last night, one failed, one worked, and I’m pretty sure that's not lost on everyone. 

- Jrue Holiday talking about seeing the game differently because of how he has been used defensively in Boston is enlightening. 

So Joe Mazzulla is running a defense that has broadened the perspective of one of the best perimeter defenders in the league, but he’s a bad coach because you don’t like when he calls timeouts. 

- Seeing most of the Celtics swing by the Maine Celtics G League game in Atlanta on an off day was cool. That's pretty great team chemistry.

- Speaking of which, Derrick White, while talking about winning Player of the Week, said he thought Payton Pritchard should have won it. 

- I’m just gonna say it, and I know it’s gonna sound weird coming from me, but I think we’ve gotten to the point where it’s true. There are just too many podcasts. 

- While I’m here, let’s just get into the sports betting issue. I know my podcast includes FanDuel as a sponsor, and these days, it’s kind of unavoidable to be associated with anything sports and not be tied to sports betting. 

I’m a big believer in allowing people to have fun doing what they want to do as long as (a) it’s legal and (b) no one is getting hurt. If those parameters apply, then go have your fun. So sports betting falls under that … to a degree. 

But for JB Bickerstaff to get calls from angry gamblers, or for Jayson Tatum to say he hears the gambling taunts and actually feels bad about costing people money, or for games or elements of games to potentially, allegedly, be fixed, it shows that we’re crossing a very important line. 

That means regulation has to be tightened. We let people do something, we’ve seen how far they're willing to go with it, and so now we have to draw lines. 

Make individual player parlays illegal. Take away the biggest temptation for individuals to ruin the game and the one thing that makes individual players a target. It won’t fix everything, but it’s a start. 

- I wonder how the gambling sites handled time standing still for nearly a minute in Kings/Magic?

- I know I watch too many cooking competition shows because now I’m justifying buying a bag of chips because “I felt like my burrito was missing texture. It needed a crunch element to it.”

- You shouldn’t be allowed to buy an NBA team if you have to put it on layaway.  

- Draymond Green is the epitome of the “if you’re good enough, you’ll get unlimited chances” concept. The Warriors need Green, so he’s going to keep getting chances no matter how ridiculously he acts. 

- I don’t know which Green was the most extra this week. Was it Draymond, or Cee Lo’s f-bomb filled halftime show last night in Atlanta?

- Guys are getting DUNKED on. These aren’t just poster dunks, they are just outrageous attempts to snatch the souls of defenders. 

- Seriously, has there been one loss this season that hasn't been seen as some indictment of this team’s chances to win a championship?

- The Last Two Minute report shows the Celtics actually forced an un-called five-second violation on the inbound play that ended with Bogdan Bogdanovic hitting the game-tying 3-pointer. So they should have won the game. Thanks for letting us know. 

- No one in a Hawks jersey could miss

- RIP Louis Gossett Jr. 

- We’re going to end this talk right now … 

No college basketball team could compete in the NBA and it’s ridiculous to even suggest it. Put UConn in the NBA and they will go 0-82. 

Connecticut has two guys projected to go in the top 10 in the NBA draft. Not the top two, the top 10. And then they have a few guys projected to go in the second round. And someone is going to go on television and say that team of college guys, with two top-10 prospects is going to step onto an NBA floor and not lose every game by 30? 

Even in this era of just saying whatever the hell you want to get attention, this is a bridge too far. They’d get blown out in every game if they went to the Euroleague. They’d get smoked on a nightly basis in the G League.

Just let UConn be a great college team. We don’t have to highlight our points by saying stupid things all the time.

- Today’s Bing AI generated image, which I think it self explanatory

- Your NBA Belt champions, the Phoenix Suns

- Here’s my latest podcast, if you’re bored