Picks 'n Pops: Cooper Flagg, riding money waves, and a blind pig

Every week I gather some thoughts about the Celtics, the NBA, and beyond and dump them here. Because making everyone go to Las Vegas every July is a borderline Satanic ritual.

- The Celtics start their summer league schedule this afternoon, so it’s time to remind everyone of my two guiding principles for evaluating summer league performance. 

1: Failure is more meaningful than success: Yes, it’ll be nice to see guys do well, but if a guy is any good, he should have success against summer competition. It's just not great and the games can be kind of haphazard. A good player should do well against that, and if he doesn't, I get a little worried. Anyone who celebrated Carsen Edwards understands what I'm saying. 

2: Look for translatable skills: I’m not looking for a guy to score 30 as much as I am for him to make good reads and good plays. Again, a lot of players should be good enough to score against summer defenses. A guy can play selfishly and score a bunch. I’d rather see a guy throw a pass out of bounds because it was the right play and his timing with his teammates was off than watch him iso. I’d rather see a guy miss a good take than make it off a bad decision. Anyone who celebrated Carsen Edwards understands what I'm saying. 

- I feel bad for piling onto Edwards there, but I'm also not wrong.

- Cooper Flagg ran out of gas in his summer debut. He played 32 minutes, which I don’t think he was ready for. I think he played pretty well in the first half and handled the Lakers' pressure really well. They blitzed him and picked him up full court most of the night and he didn’t turn the ball over until he slipped on the floor and traveled with a couple minutes to go. 

Again, looking for what translates, I saw a guy who handled the ball well and used change of speed to get past defenders really well. He had really good court vision and made a lot of plays that weren’t finished. He could have had eight or nine assists instead of four. Also, three steals and a block speak to his defensive effort. 

He made the big play of the game to win it for Dallas by getting the blocked shot on one end and the assist after bringing the ball up in transition. 

He’ll need to tweak his release and get a feel for what moves will work in the NBA, but that's all coachable stuff. I saw an 18-year-old kid look like a polished NBA player for long stretches of that game. He shot the ball like crap, but I don’t care about that. I think Flagg will be as advertised. 

- There must be something in the Nembhard genes because Ryan Nembhard plays exactly like Andrew Nembhard. Are they brothers or did their family just perfect cloning technology?

- Here’s Boston’s preseason schedule: 

- Brad Stevens on Jayson Tatum’s recovery: 

“We’re not even talking about timeline for return. We’re not even going there. Jayson is working every single day. He has literally been here every day, except he took a few days break, but when he takes a few days break, (trainer) Nick (Sang) goes with him. So he’s still working every single day. It’s been unique to be here in June, and the early part of July, and both Jayson and Jaylen are here. We’ve played, obviously, late and this is usually the time where guys get away. But coming off of each of them having surgery, they’ve both been here. Jaylen was in this morning, he did a shooting workout, looks good. Jayson was in — moving pretty fast on that boot today. All indications are they are both progressing at incredible rates, which is great. But we’re not going to put any pressure on Jayson to get back any time soon. We have no reason to believe that Jaylen won’t be all clear and ready to go fairly shortly.”

He later added: “I think one of the things about the Tatum injury that is really important to us is that there's no expectation on timeline to return, but there's an expectation on fully returning.”

It’s hard not to focus on the “Jayson was in — moving pretty fast on that boot today. All indications are they are both progressing at incredible rates, which is great.” I don’t know what that means overall, but it’s good to hear. 

- Tatum posted a photo of himself hanging out with Deuce and people are excited to see him not wearing the boot. 

I've never seen people this excited about an exposed calf since Annette Kellerman walked onto Revere Beach.

This is normal stuff. The foot can come out of the boot when relaxing, but the boot still has to be worn for walking. 

- Kevin Durant on recovering from a torn Achilles: “I think that’s going to be the adjustment for them. Those deep 3’s that both of those guys shoot, they shoot a lot of tough step-back 3’s. I was shooting those before I got injured, and I fine-tuned my game to take some of that stuff out, the sidestep. Not because it’s a bad shot, it’s because I didn’t truly have enough power in my right leg yet in order for me to do those moves. So it’s going to be that type of adjustment for guys coming back from Achilles, just building that power up.”

Look, I don’t want to be a jerk about a serious injury, but I’m not upset that Tatum will have to reduce how many sidestep 3-pointers he takes. I look at that as a silver lining. 

- You have to have zero shame to say Deandre Ayton is in the same class as Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Anthony Davis, and Joel Embiid. 

This might be the single dumbest thing anyone has ever said about basketball on TV. This is something CTE would say if it had CTE.

- OKC gave Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams max extensions which kick in after next season. That currently puts the ‘26-27 roster at $246 million which is expected to be approximately $20 million over the second apron if the cap numbers increase another 10%. 

They won’t quite be in Boston’s situation, though, as it will be their first year over the second apron and over the tax. But the financial decisions will be coming quickly. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s extension begins the following season, and the Thunder will have $218 committed to 10 players. 

Isaiah Hartenstein and Lu Dort are prime candidates to get moved at some point in an effort to keep costs down. Alex Caruso might have to go at some point. The Thunder are going to need a few of their draft picks to start hitting, which makes Nikola Topic’s summer league a very interesting one. 

He looked pretty good in his debut after missing his rookie season due to a torn ACL. He can see the floor very well, which might just be a thing guys named Nikola from Serbia do. I like his court vision a lot, and because the Thunder can truly run it back this season, he can spend the season in the G League and in spot NBA minutes getting himself up to speed. 

If he and other future draft picks can hit, the Thunder could have a pipeline of young, cheap talent coming into the team to support their core. Basically, Sam Presti can do what Brad Stevens is doing just through the draft. They can have up to 12 first-round picks over the next four seasons. 

- Devin Booker just got a two-year, $145 million extension. That works out to $895,000 per scheduled game. He averages 67.3 games per season, so that would be an expected $2.16 million per game. Last year he played 75 games. If he can play 72 games in one of the upcoming seasons and 73 in the other, then he’ll get $1 million per game. 

Booker is making a lot of money. 

- This is a great time to remind everyone that players get 51% of the revenue and the owners get 49%, and Booker’s deal doesn’t change that. The numbers we see are kind of fake because it’s more of a percentage of the cap than it is a solid number. Remember, 10% of Booker’s money goes into escrow just like everyone else’s, and if the player’s cut (with the escrow included) ends up being more than 51%, then the appropriate amount of escrow money goes back to the owners so the split remains 51/49. 

So while I’m just as floored as anyone at the number, Booker is still just getting a split of the revenue that's coming in. The players can argue how that 51% is being split between them, but it’s still a split.

- I love listening to Mark Jones call NBA games because he occasionally drops very specific terminology that must confuse the hell out of casual fans. In the Mavs-Lakers summer league game, he literally said “nice blind pig action there,” which is an actual play. 

I actually would love to see some blind pig action with Amari Williams and Hugo Gonzalez in summer league. If Gonzalez is that great a cutter and Williams is that great a passer, they’ll be able to connect on that a couple of times. I’d love to see it run on a sideline out-of-bounds (SLOB) play. 

How fun would it be to go to work on Monday and in the middle of a Celtics conversation, you casually say “I really liked how they used the blind pig action off the slob this weekend” and then just walk off?

- Luke Kornet picking number seven in San Antonio and saying he did it because he wants to be one third the player Tim Duncan was makes me miss him already.

- The Knicks are reportedly interested in Marcus Smart if he gets bought out by the Wizards. The last thing I want to see is Smart defending against the Celtics in New York knowing he can gamble and not get burned. 

- Steph Curry on Al Horford and the Warriors: “When…if, when all that stuff happens, I’ll talk about it.”

I’m just going to assume Horford is going to Golden State until I hear otherwise at this point. 

- I’ll never forgive the Celtics for holding a media availability and making me work on Prime Day. What have we become?

- RIP Frank Layden, who was a major piece of Utah Jazz history, but also one of the game’s great characters. He was hilarious in all the old NBA VHS tapes I used to watch as a kid. I’ll never forget a clip of him jokingly making a water boy drink some of the water in the cups before handing one over, just in case someone tried to poison him on the sidelines. 

- This week’s AI-generated image: Checking in on Devin Booker right now

He’s so rich, he’s built a wave pool made of money in his house. Amazing. He's going full Scrooge McDuck.

- The Thunder have locked up their core for the long term and they have a million picks. But I’m looking at Nikola Topic’s court vision and thinking “damn, the Thunder did it again.” 

I don’t care about the scoring so much, but when I watch how he reads the game, I think there is really something to build on with this kid. And as I wrote earlier, he has time to develop this skill. 

I know the Thunder are going to be hit by the second apron like everyone else, but this is a nice player to have in the pipeline and try to ride the wave through the rough financial times. Once again, that means Sam Presti is having the Best Week Ever!

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