Picks 'n Pops: Tatum opens up, NBA streaming, and the American Nightmare

Every week I gather some thoughts about the Celtics, the NBA, and beyond and dump them here. Because I seem to have been left off the short list of Vice Presidential candidates.

- There are three quotes of note from Jayson Tatum’s Sports Illustrated feature. Here’s one. I’ll get to the others later.

On the Finals loss to Golden State: “That was the first time where I thought, I don’t know, maybe I’m not one of the guys that can be the best player on the championship team … it was so hard to get to the Finals. And we still didn’t win. Getting there, that was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I was drained. That summer I had moments thinking that maybe you have to be a legend to win a championship. And there were moments where I wondered if I was going to be that guy, just because of how hard it is.”

On one hand, this is about Tatum facing a crisis of confidence after a Finals loss and it driving him to be better. On the other, it’s about Tatum realizing that he couldn't do it alone and buying into the need for him to be more than just a scorer. 

In a recent interview, Tatum said he always wanted to win, but he wanted it to look a certain way. It's when he didn’t care how winning looked that he finally won. 

Tatum is a special player, but he’s not in the class of a Nikola Jokic. He’s not an unstoppable force of nature. He’s just a really damn good basketball player. Once he understood that he couldn't will his way past every double team but that he was also still good enough to always draw the double teams, he realized how effective his passing could be. 

This version of Tatum, with the players around him to finish off his passes, makes the Celtics impossible to cover. 

- It’s cool that the Celtics are giving Bob Cousy a ring. He’s the only remaining person tied to the Celtics to have been around for every championship. 

This is what makes the Celtics a special franchise.

- The Celtics already have a back-to-back and three-in-four stretch scheduled. 

They have a pair of preseason exhibitions against the Nuggets in Abu Dhabi on October 4 and 6 (noon and 10 a.m.) but then come back for back-to-back games at home on the 12th and 13th and then they go to Toronto for a game on the 15th. 

Preseason back-to-backs are stupid. Why even bother scheduling them? 

The Celtics will be compelled by the league to play their starters a reasonable amount in Abu Dhabi, so that means the rest of the preseason will feature maybe one game where they're all in action … if that.

I’m all for the league making money, but they really are starting to put it ahead of everything else. 

- Speaking of which, TNT is no longer going to be part of the NBA broadcast menu. They matched Amazon’s financial offer, but the league basically said TNT couldn't match Amazon’s global reach so TNT is out. 

People are sad that Inside the NBA is going away but I don’t care. Admittedly, I’m not their target audience at all. I’m looking for actual analysis and not an overly-sensitive Shaquille O'Neal threatening to beat up Charles Barkley. 

My point is we’re going to need a GPS to find our way to where the games are being broadcast next season. 

- Celtics minority owner David Bonderman, co-owner of the Seattle Kraken, is selling his stake and reportedly joining the charge for an expansion team in Seattle.

My guess about expansion is Seattle and Las Vegas get teams with two of New Orleans, Memphis, and Minnesota moving East. 

- Tatum on personnel changes leading to a championship: “The toughest part about winning this championship is that (Marcus) Smart isn’t here and (Robert Williams) isn’t here. But I’m so happy that we have Jrue (Holiday) and (Kristaps Porzingis). Those guys obviously took us to the next level.”

It’s tough to see two guys who are so easy to like leave and then have Boston win a title. There's an implication that losing those guys led to the championship. The reality is that everyone on the team needed to evolve in conjunction with those changes.

This wasn’t like playing draw poker where you pull two cards out of a losing hand, draw two to make a winner, and that's all. The other cards had to find a way to change their suits so Boston could come up with a straight flush. 

I’ll put it this way. I couldn't be the husband I am to my wife today without having gone through my first marriage. Not everyone needs to do that, but I did. Was it her fault? Nope. But did I have to move on to get here? Yes. 

- FanDuel has Boston as the easy favorites to win the East and has set their win total over/under at 58.5 wins. Seems right to me. That line might get some good money on both sides as people weigh the Kristaps Porzingis injury, Boston’s short turnaround, and a championship hangover against a weak East, questions about the competition, and the Celtics running back a championship rotation. 

What’s funny to me is that Tatum is ninth on their MVP list and Joe Mazzulla is seventh in their Coach of the Year odds. It seems as if people still can’t decide if this team is lead by great players or great coaching. 

- Gilbert Arenas’ rant about South Sudan is racist, xenophobic, and yet another example of why he’s a terrible person. His tweeted apology to Luol Deng was hollow and lame. Arenas has proven once again he doesn’t deserve a media career and that today’s trend of people who will say anything to get attention has its limits. 

- Joe Burrow showed up to Bengals camp cosplaying as "The American Nightmare" Cody Rhodes. 

- When you get dunked on and it’s captured in a photo like this, all you can do is own it. 

Bravo, KD. 

- Tatum on not speaking up more during Jaylen Brown trade rumors:

“I’ve always told him that maybe I could have done a better job of voicing my feelings in the public eye … “He always knew that I wanted him here. I would always tell him like, ‘Man, I don’t get involved with any of those talks.’ I never went to [Celtics president of basketball operations] Brad [Stevens] or went to any player like, ‘Yo, I want this guy in, I want this guy out of here.’ I show up and I want to do my job and play basketball. And looking back on in those moments, I didn’t know how that could affect somebody, because I was never in that situation. I feel like maybe I could have done a better job of publicly saying, ‘No, we don’t want anybody, we want JB.’ I just was always like, ‘I want to stay out of it.’”

I get Tatum’s reticence. If he advocated for Brown and Brown got traded, then that sets up a different storyline. But I’m glad he’s realizing that his silence on the matter also can be construed a certain way. 

More than that, Tatum is in a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situation. If he says something, he’s held to it forever. If he’s silent then people fill in the blanks on their own. There's nothing he can say, or not say, that won’t be fodder for someone with an opinion and time to fill. 

- The design of the Olympic torch was just one big set up to the punchline of Snoop looking like he's carrying giant joint.

- This week’s Bing AI-generated image: Don’t play with your food, boys.

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