Picks 'n Pops: Taking responsibility, a possible Celtics trade, and a guy who just doesn't get it

Every week, I gather some thoughts about the Celtics, the NBA, and beyond and dump them here. Because I'm still waiting for a few more inches of ice covering my outdoor holiday lights to thaw. 

- Jaylen Brown blamed the officials for a lot of what happened in the Denver game, but he bears plenty of responsibility himself. Here are a couple of bad defensive plays from late in the game. 

This is the beginning of the Nuggets' run. Brown is going to say he didn’t want to give up the 3, but the Celtics first priority is always defending the rim. Zeke Nnaji simply seals Brown off, and Jaylen makes no effort to get in front. So when Neemias Queta goes to double Jamal Murray, Nnaji is in perfect position and he gets three the old-fashioned way. 

Brown should have spun his way in front. 

And at that point, even if Murray made the skip pass, the Celtics could have easily rotated out to the shooters. 

Neemias Queta would have gone back to Nnaji in the process, and that basket would have been saved. 

Then later, as the Nuggets were making their run, Brown found himself back on this fast break. 

Brown never turned to see where Murray might be looking. At this point, Murray should be seeing the “Boston” on Brown’s chest, not the number on his back. 

By doing that, he made the decision easy for Murray. Watson was unchecked on the right side with Brown’s back to him. What’s worse is that Watson was on Brown as the break started, so Brown should have accounted for him. Instead, he just ran back to pick up Derrick White’s man without thinking of the guy on the other side. Anfernee Simons couldn't get back in time, and it was an easy layup. If Brown were open and facing Murray, he would have been able to see the pass as it happened and either steal or deflect it, or at the very least get into position to challenge the shot or take a charge.

Those are two examples, but there are more. Brown wasn’t alone, but he was a part of the problem. He clearly wasn’t focused enough to make the right plays in those situations, and he certainly wasn’t focused enough when he turned the ball three times after this play. 

If you’re going to take the answers to multiple postgame questions to send messages to refs about getting calls, you’d better be unassailable in other aspects of the game. Brown is having an MVP-level season and he’ll have plenty of opportunities to erase this game from our memories, but he opens himself up to the nitpicking when he lets the officiating get into his head so much that it’s his only postgame talking point. 

- I think we’re going to start seeing taller defenders on Brown. He loves pulling up for jump shots, and the length could bother him a little more. 

- Josh Minott is out with an ankle sprain, which is bad luck because I think there were opportunities to go small and switchable more often against Denver. Joe Mazzulla simply said Minott has an ankle sprain and the team hasn’t released any information, and he wasn’t around Wednesday night that I saw. 

- Brian Scalabrine is really serious about the Boston-LA Clippers trade talk surrounding Ivica Zubac being real. He spent a fair amount of time adamantly discussing it before the Nuggets game. 

The cost seems to be Simons, at least one first-round pick (maybe two), and a young wing. Assuming Scal is right about this, I’m going to guess that any hangup will be that Boston wants to keep Hugo Gonzalez and send Jordan Walsh while the Clippers want Gonzalez. 

I’d rather send an extra pick and keep Gonzalez. That's how high I am on him. I think the ‘26 and ‘28 first round picks plus Walsh and Simons is as far as I’d go. Gonzalez is a keeper. 

- Josh McDaniels was born to be the Patriots OC, but Joe Mazzulla let him dabble in some basketball play creation, too. 

"He came to a game a couple of weeks ago, and he actually drew up a couple of pre-snap motion plays for us for me to kind of visualize and see how we could use them as sets," Mazzulla told Zolak & Bertrand on Tuesday. “I think that it's the pre-snap stuff and the ability to recognize whether they're disguising man or zone (coverage) and how you go about making the defense tell that, so you know beforehand, and then having to read in real-time -- that's right where basketball is.”

It really is amazing how such a simple game -- put a round ball in a hoop suspended 10 feet above a court -- has become so insanely complicated. It has become the most outrageous, years-long game of “yes, and” improvisation. 

It started out as “I heard someone say peach baskets” and now somehow everyone from every sport is playing 4-D chess on a space station. 

- Amari Williams is averaging a double-double in the G-League and he’s dropped a couple of triple-doubles along the way. I’m not going to get TOO excited about it since JD Davison and Mac McClung are the two most recent G League MVPs and they're not getting any traction in the NBA. But as I always say, it’s better to succeed in the G League than fail, because failing there means you have no chance in the NBA. At least with success there's some hope. 

Best-case short-term scenario for Boston is they make that trade for Zubac, Queta becomes the backup, and Williams becomes a third-string guy next season who can step up in case of injury. We’ll see where it goes from there, but that would give Boston a nice change-of-pace option next year and maybe, eventually, in the ultimate best-case scenario, a guy who can be the hub of an offense. 

- The Celtics have a chance to really finish this month out strong. Toronto will be tough tonight, and a win will probably help Boston avoid a three-game losing streak considering the Spurs are in town tomorrow and that's the third game in four nights. But Boston finishes the month facing Indiana twice, Atlanta twice, Miami, Detroit, Brooklyn, Chicago, Portland, and Sacramento.

Only Detroit stands out as an exceptionally tough opponent and the Celtics have played them well. There's a chance they could head into February hanging on to a very good record … IF … they play focused basketball. 

- Heat-Bulls was postponed last night because the court came down with Patrick Ewing syndrome: It couldn't stop sweating. 

- Giannis Antetokounmpo said “there will never be a moment that I will come out and say, 'I want a trade.’” No. Instead, he’ll direct his agents to make the situation so uncomfortable that the Bucks make the decision. It’s like saying you don’t want to break up with your girlfriend, so instead you pull a George Costanza and just start smoking and become a slob. 

- Victor Wembanyama is incomprehensible. 

What’s funny is that he could kick the balls out of the hoop, but his minutes restriction didn't allow him to play down the stretch of a loss. 

- Simons got an assist for this play:

This rule needs to be fixed. Assists are supposed to tell me that a player created a scoring opportunity for a teammate. Simons just gave Brown the ball in the back court. There are too many of these out there in the league and it needs to be tightened up. 

- The Thunder have come back down to earth a little. I’m very curious to see how their January goes and how the narrative changes if they continue to play just okay basketball. 

- A super cool moment for me, getting to recreate a photo from 1991 with Dee Brown. 

I was 18 years old in that picture, fresh out of high school. Brown won the dunk contest that year and went on a mall dunking tour that summer to promote his Reeboks. I participated in the dunk contest and met Brown afterwards, taking that photo. 

As you can see, almost nothing has changed about me in 34 years. 

- Trae Young wrote a farewell to Atlanta. 

I have spent the last 24 hours saying that I’m open to a Trae Young redemption arc. I thought maybe he’d see that he was the problem. But no, he doesn’t see that at all. 

"Bringing a championship to Atlanta was always my goal,” he wrote. “However, between the injuries, the setbacks, and situations that didn't make sense, we never truly got to see our full potential."

The situations that don’t make sense? Yeah, Trae, like every time you were on “defense.” 

And the absolute AUDACITY for a 35% 3-point shooter to sign his name TRA3 YOUNG is beyond hilarious to me. You have GOT to be kidding. He’s shooting 30.5% this year. He shot 34% last season. 

You’d think he’d have a realization that all of his decision in life have led him to the Wizards in 2025, a team that's not only tanking, but whose pick is top-eight protected, which means they have no fear that acquiring him would ruin that protection. You’d think he’d look in the mirror and think it was time to maybe have a different attitude. 

Nope. Not one bit. 

So congratulations to the Hawks for getting out of that situation. Sure, you could have had Luka Dončić and probably been really good for a long time already, but we’re here now. This is a banner day for the Hawks, who are certainly having the Best Week Ever!

- Here’s my latest podcast (and a bonus segment all on the Young trade), if you’re bored.