Picked-up pieces while trying to decide which of our winter sports teams will play longer into the postseason.

■ It’s been a bad few days for the Celtics. Clearly, the world champion Cleveland Cavaliers are the Celtics’ daddy. The C’s were appropriately spanked Wednesday after the Cavs were informed that a weeknight regular-season game in Boston was some kind of a test of Cleveland’s championship mettle. Thursday night’s subsequent flop in Atlanta was yet another reminder that the Celtics are a long, long way from being championship-caliber. They have only one scorer and he’s 5 feet 9 inches. They have a thin bench and get outrebounded on a regular basis. Getting to the conference finals with this bunch would be a miracle. Here’s hoping the Green Teamers don’t try to tell us the season is a success if they bow out again in the first round.

■ Granted, I don’t watch a ton of hockey, but I’m pretty sure Patrice Bergeron has never lost a faceoff.

■ Will never understand the LeBron hate around here.

■ Despite its overtime loss to Mississippi State in the national semifinals, UConn’s women’s basketball team should be ranked No. 1 in the country in the season-ending poll. Does anyone really think the Huskies were the third-best team this year? Ironically, the game they lost was by far the most entertaining of any of the games they played over the last four years while winning 111 in a row. Nothing like competition. Geno Auriemma and the Huskies were pure class in defeat.

■ It makes me nervous when Bob Kraft talks about 39-year-old Tom Brady playing another six or seven seasons. Let’s not be ridiculous. This is simply arrogant and invites bad karma.

■ We love Eliot Tatelman, but those Jordan’s Furniture ads telling us we’ll get our purchases refunded if the Red Sox “sweep the world championship’’ are carefully crafted to exploit non-fans and pink hats who don’t know how difficult and unlikely this is. Sure, the Sox could sweep the Cubs or another NL team in the World Series (they’ve done it twice this century), but fans have better odds getting free furniture if they can correctly guess the exact number of snowflakes in Colorado.

■ Anybody seen Al Horford?

■ MLB commissioner Rob Manfred should be concerned about an ESPN poll of more than 6,000 sports fans asking them to name their favorite pro athletes. The top 50 names on the list did not include a single active major leaguer.

■ The first 1,000 goofy Gronk moments were amusing. Now it’s just tired.

■ Am I a bad fan because I can’t get into a lather about Tony Romo replacing Phil Simms in the CBS broadcast booth? OK, so he has no experience. What’s the worst that can happen? If the network wants to give Romo some experience talking on television they should farm him out to CSNNE, which now stages an interminable nightly sports-talk telethon.

■ It never ends with Fanboy Judge Richard Berman. Thanks to an interview with Sports Illustrated’s MMQB (how many judges do interviews?) we recently learned that Berman once ruled on a case involving Carl Everett. “He [Everett] played for the Mets and was a great outfielder and he was charged with child abuse,’’ Berman told MMQB. Everett’s children were temporarily placed in foster care and Berman ultimately dropped the child-abuse charges. According to Oliver Wendell Berman, the Everett case “ . . . was kind of like a warm-up to the Brady case.’’ Berman also delivered these nuggets: “I think Deflategate is finally put to rest by that Super Bowl . . . My mother-in-law lives in Rhode Island, and I’m a hero in the coffee shop where she goes,’’ and “it’s been super fun.’’ Asked if it was hard seeing his Brady decision overturned, the celebrity-seeking magistrate said, “It took a while, so the Super Bowl was good for me, too.’’ Wow.

■ Love how Rajon Rondo put himself in charge of a 2008 Celtics summer championship reunion. That’s like when room-emptier Adrian Gonzalez tried to organize a Red Sox team dinner.

■ The New York Times’ Juliet Macur wrote an interesting column from Washington on Georgetown’s introduction of Patrick Ewing as its head basketball coach. The article centered on the press conference presence of an AAU coach named Keith Stevens who evidently holds the strings on many of the great high school players in greater D.C. Stevens coaches an AAU program named “Team Takeover,’’ and according to Macur, “At 5 feet 6 inches, he might be smaller in physical stature than Ewing, but his influence on the area’s basketball scene is probably bigger.’’ Swell. I just love it when ubiquitous and oft-nefarious AAU bagmen have more juice than head coaches of the local college program. “I’m not going to call him,’’ the arrogant Stevens said when asked about Ewing. “But I think he’ll call me.’’

■ Meanwhile, we have Kentucky’s John Calipari provoking nitwit Kentucky fans after his team was bounced by North Carolina in the Round of Eight. “It’s amazing that we were in that game where they practically fouled out my team,’’ Calipari said after the game. This led to multiple death threats from Kentucky fans aimed at referee John Higgins.

■ Can’t believe NHL teams get away with announcing that a player has a “lower-body injury.’’ How very Belichick of them.

■ QUIZ: No Celtic has won an NBA scoring title, but the C’s have had six players who won the scoring title before coming to Boston. Name the six. Answer below.

■ If I’m a fan of the 49ers, it makes me nervous when new head coach Kyle Shanahan (former offensive coordinator of the choking Atlanta Falcons) says, “There’s nothing in that game [Super Bowl LI] I’d do differently.’’ Sounds like Pete Carroll after the slant pass.

■ Props to the late Jerry Krause, who built the Chicago Bulls dynasty after starting his career in Major League Baseball. Dave Dombrowski worked with Krause when both learned under Roland Hemond with the White Sox in the late 1970s. But it was in the NBA that Krause made his mark. He never got the respect he deserved, perhaps because he was a rumpled guy who Michael Jordan referred to as “Crumbs.’’ Krause died last month at the age of 77.

■ Is anything more stale and overdone than the New York tabloid coverage of the schoolyard feud between washed-up Mets Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry? According to the latest breathless dispatches, Doc and Straw are on speaking terms again. Whew. Now I can sleep tonight.

■ Chris Sale matching up against Justin Verlander makes for Monday afternoon appointment TV.

QUIZ Answer: Dave Bing, Pete Maravich, Bob McAdoo, Tiny Archibald, Dominique Wilkins, and Shaquille O’Neal.

Dan Shaughnessy can be reached at dshaughnessy@globe.com