Picks 'n Pops: A kid's watch, lunatic Payton Pritchard, and Kaos

Every week I gather some thoughts about the Celtics, the NBA, and beyond and dump them here. Because I'm still getting over jet lag from Abu Dhabi and I didn't even go.

- It’s a good thing the Celtics are as good as they are because this schedule is pretty stupid. If they actually needed preseason to get up to speed, they’d be screwed.

- Press conferences are bit different overseas, I guess. One reporter in Abu Dhabi asked Jayson Tatum about his watch, saying it looked like a kid’s watch. 

It’s actually a Richard Mille watch worth about a quarter of a million dollars, so that explains Tatum’s reaction. 

- That question set the tone for the rest of the presser. Tatum and Derrick White both acted like me and my teammates in the back of a class in college. We should not have been allowed to sit together. 

- Joe Mazzulla’s take on the criticism faces (via the Netflix series “Starting 5”) is great: 

Framing it that way takes a lot of the edge off, and it also makes perfect sense. Basically, this comes with the territory of being elite. No one is having this debate about Payton Pritchard. No disrespect to Pritchard, but the harshest criticisms are saved for the best players.

So putting it that way has to help Tatum understand his place better. When asked about Mazzulla and guidance like this, Tatum said, “I love Joe to death. I admire the way he’s really come into his own. He truly does things his own way. He’s not going to be somebody he isn’t. He cares about all of us individually. He believes in us, and he works with us. He’s not talking down to us. We’re all in the relationship together.”

- I find it funny that, in the annual GM survey, Mazzulla got votes for best motivator, best offensive scheme and best defensive scheme, yet not one vote for best coach. I know it doesn’t matter and the votes probably came from different places, but to see all that credit for different things on the same page without anyone putting all of it together is interesting.

- Other quick thoughts from the GM survey: 

• Teams can’t vote for themselves, so it was hilarious to see 97% of the league pick the Celtics to win the East and 3% pick Cleveland. That means Brad Stevens (or someone in the C’s front office) picked the Cavs over New York, Philly, and Milwaukee. Personally, I think they should have thrown the Pacers a bone for giving Boston the biggest challenge in the playoffs … and also Brad giving some love to his home state. 
• GMs were asked to vote for the best at each position but Luka Doncic got votes at point guard, shooting guard, and small forward. Can they pick one, please? 
• Also, Tatum got most “best small forward” votes, which is great, but he technically plays power forward now for Boston. With White and Jrue Holiday in the starting backcourt, Jaylen Brown is the small forward (where he got one vote). He also got a vote at shooting guard.

- Wyc Grousbeck, talking to the Globe, says the team is in excellent financial shape. He seemed to hint that the team wasn’t going to let money stand in their way.

“We’ve made money in the past that’s been built up in the bank account, and we are fine,” he said. 

I’ll just put that comment in the bank, too, just in case we need to revisit it in July.

- Robert Williams (hamstring) is hurt again. I wish I could be shocked by this.

- One of LeBron James’ best skills is maintaining plausible deniability from things that happen to his team and teammates.

Coaching change? What a shock! Drew Carter and Brian Scalabrine joke about a teammate being scapegoated for team failure? How dare they? 

LeBron has figured out how to launder blame in the NBA. You can never trace it back to him, so he gets to throw his hands up in the air and say “hey, wasn’t me!” when we all know everything that happens in his organization gets passed by him first. 

- I never share private conversations I have with anyone in the organization, but I think this one is fine. Coming out of practice sharing an elevator with Payton Pritchard, I made the small-talk comment “sucks that you guys have to play three preseason games in four nights.” His response was “yeah, but I love it though.” 

I responded, "of course you do, because you're a lunatic." 

Just in case you weren’t 100% aware that ball truly is life for Pritchard. 

- What a complete meltdown by the New York Liberty last night. WNBA teams were 183-0 leading by 15 in the fourth quarter, but the Liberty choked away their lead in Game 1 of the WNBA Finals. Miraculously, they had a chance to win at the free throw line but Breanna Stewart missed her second free throw. Then in overtime, Stewart missed a wide-open game-tying layup. 

Complete choke. 

- I echo Sue Bird’s criticism of talking heads like Stephen A. Smith painting the drop in WNBA viewership since Caitlin Clark’s elimination as a negative. The non-Clark ratings are still at record highs, which shows the league is more popular than ever. 

The Finals is a matchup between two teams who routinely draw big crowds at NBA arenas (the Minnesota Lynx fill the Target Center and the New York Liberty pack the Barclays Center). The Connecticut Sun sold out TD Garden. Clark is the biggest draw in the sport right now, and congrats to her for that. She’s a megastar. But the league is doing quite well overall. 

- The Sun might need an overhaul. They're good, and they are knocking on the door of a championship, but they are quick to get on one another when things go bad. Their demeanor in Game 5 of the semifinals was as big a problem as their defense and missed shots. 

- It doesn’t get much more wholesome than Tatum playing duck duck goose with a bunch of his teammates’ children. 

- It’s good to see Jay Scrubb getting another chance after his ACL injury last season. It’s also good to see the Celtics do right by him as an organization. 

“We’ve been in communication ever since I got injured, so I pretty much knew like this is where I wanted to be,” he said. “I voiced it with them that I wanted to be here and they took good care of me through my rehab process. So I felt like this would be the best place for me to come back."

This stuff matters as an organization. Players and agents notice this. The NBA, like all professional sports, is a cold, ugly business, so whenever a team can do something human, it stands out. 

The Celtics make cold-hearted decisions, too. They have to. But they don’t have to be a cold organization. They do a good job of being more than just transactional in their dealings with players. 

- Netflix canceled “Kaos” after six weeks. It was a pretty unique show that went through a complicated setup and never got a chance to pay off on its story. 

It’s par for the course in the streaming industry, where shows get the shortest of leashes, if they get them at all. As a viewer, I don’t want to invest time in any new shows because I feel like they’ll go away. 

It reminds me of Cheers, which had horrible ratings in its first season but it had backers at the network and, also, no other replacements in waiting. It ended up becoming one of the best shows in television history, and the first season is now seen as a classic. 

You can’t ask viewers to make a commitment if you’re not willing to commit to the product yourselves. 

- This week’s Bing AI-generated image: An inside look at the Celtics’ first practice after coming back from Abu Dhabi

Anyone else find it funny that AI can create a realistic image like this out of thin air full of people who don't actually exist, but it can't spell "basketball?"

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