Picks 'n Pops: Enjoying the moment, retirement, and swag for Paul McCartney

Every week I gather some thoughts about the Celtics, the NBA, and beyond and dump them here. Because I just survived an earthquake and I'm full of life

- I feel bad for anyone who hasn’t been able to enjoy this Celtics season because they’ve been too focused on failures of the past. No one can be sure how the playoffs will go, but if the ONLY thing you're looking for is whether they win a title, then you’ve missed out on some special seasons by a few different players. You’ve missed out on Kristaps Porzingis being the happiest guy in the NBA. 

A lot of fun things have happened. A lot of people have grown and taken steps forward. I have thoroughly enjoyed this regular season. Nothing can take that away.

- Porzingis says he’s still not 100%. So there's still room for this team to get better. 

- Charles Lee is reportedly a candidate for the open Charlotte Hornets job. This is what happens when a team does as well as Boston. The coaching staff is about to be poached. 

- Whenever the Thunder are in town, I like to take a second to crow a little about Emerson College Men’s Basketball. We have two General Managers in the NBA (Sam Presti with OKC and Will Dawkins in Washington), a former GM (Rob Hennigan with the Magic, now in OKC’s front office) and another half dozen or so scouts and assistants. 

I take personal pride in this phenomenon as part of the original crew coached by Hank Smith (now a scout for OKC). I only got two years under Smith, but they were transformative years for me as a player and as a person. He helped me get to Greece, and helped me through some post-playing career struggles. 

We were just some tiny communications and theater school in the Back Bay, but we built something special, and our fingerprints are all over the league. 

- Okay, let’s be clear here: Rajon Rondo didn’t “officially” retire. After two years out of the NBA, two former players asked him on a podcast if he was done playing and he said yes. There's nothing “official” about that. He didn’t announce anything. He confirmed the obvious. 

- That said, I’m all for anything that gets us classic Rondo Celtics highlights.

Before I took a lot of crap on the internet for being a big Marcus Smart guy, I took a lot of crap on the internet for being a big Rajon Rondo guy. 

- A 4.7 magnitude earthquake hit New Jersey, and I felt it at my house in Rhode Island. 

Look, we do blizzards and hurricanes over here. That's our thing. We’re good at that stuff. I have no interest in earthquakes migrating east. Stay over in California where you belong. You don’t see us sending blizzards to Los Angeles.

- I don’t know the criteria for winning Teammate of the Year, but I do know no one does whatever that is better than Al Horford. It doesn’t matter what the requirements are. Horford is the guy. 

- People fear the Miami Heat out of habit. They had a chance last night to get out of the play-in tournament but lost to the Sixers, giving up a 15-3 run to end the game. That's the time that’s supposed to belong to Jimmy Butler, but he didn’t score in the final 6:28. 

I have a feeling that we’re going to see history repeat itself with Miami losing a play-in game, then beating Chicago to face the top seed in the first round. 

This time, the top seed should take care of business so I can write the piece “See, Milwaukee, this is how it was supposed to happen.” 

- Josh Hart on Butler: "Jimmy kind of does side quests during the year until about April. Then he starts locking in. I’m sure people are going to see that maniac competitive side now that he’s done with the side quests and he’s on to the main quest."

It's funny to me the reputation Butler has for a guy who has never won anything. Playoff Jimmy is definitely a thing, but Playoff Jimmy has zero rings. Maybe he should be on only one quest. 

- Congratulations to the Maine Celtics for making the G League Eastern Conference Finals 

That's a fun group of guys. It'd be nice to see them win something. 

- Really tough break for the Knicks losing Julius Randle for the rest of the season. Now to sort through the lies Tom Thibodeau told the media when he said Randle never had full-contact workouts as part of his recovery. Randle specifically said he re-injured his shoulder during a full-contact workout. 

- Gilbert Arenas is going to get a big spotlight job and it’s going to piss me off because all he’s doing is spewing the worst takes. We can’t reward another person for doing that. 

- Ya gotta love hockey

Use your words, boys. 

- Women’s basketball is having a moment

You can’t tell me no one watches. 

- The Patriots should draft Nikola Jokic at QB 

- I’ve heard two announcers say Chet “Holmgrum” instead of Holmgren. First, it’s not that hard of a name. It shouldn’t be botched like that. Second, if your job is to talk about NBA players, for God’s sake have the respect to say the name right. 

- While we’re here, I’ll repeat myself. Adrian Wojnarowski is “Wor-jan-owski.” The man says his name every day on TV. C’mon people. 

- Someone get Paul McCartney a freakin’ T-shirt!

The man wrote "Eleanor Rigby," for God's sake. We can't get the guy an ill-fitting shirt with the logo of an insurance company sponsor on it? 

- Malachi Flynn did what now?

- The Bucks are .500 under Doc Rivers. Good thing they got Adrian Griffin outta there, huh?

- Congrats to Vince Carter and Chauncey Billups on their Hall of Fame elections. 

- Billups getting into the Hall is great news for Jaylen Brown. If he can win a ring or two in Boston, he’ll be on his way to a Billups-esque resume. 

- I’m not a big “the league is soft” guy, but Rudy Gobert really doesn’t help things being pissed off about being boxed out. 

That's textbook boxing out. Be aware of your surroundings.

- New NBA salary cap projections are out and with the number coming in at $141 million instead of $149 million, it means Brown will not actually become the first $300 million player in NBA history. His final number will drop to about $285 million or so. 

Tough break, Jaylen. Maybe you can pick up some Uber shifts after practice to make up the difference. 

- An earthquake on Friday and then an eclipse on Monday? I can see why people used to think the gods were mad at them. 

I don’t know how they made the leap to ritual sacrifice as an appeasement, but I can see the first part for sure. 

- It's innovative segments like this that keep me on top of the podcasting game

- Here’s this week’s Bing AI-generated image: The Celtics kicking back while the rest of the league is still frantically at work

- Your current NBA Belt champions: The Philadelphia 76ers

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