Pepper McSausage Picks

A pick a day until my mom comes back to life.

Yesterday was a loss, no pun intended. The opportunity was there I think. There’s no place to find a potential assists/potential rebounds game logs post-game, but the eye test suggested the opportunity was there. The problem with the eye test in sports is so often we’re judging it through red, compromised or otherwise misguided lenses. Add the 2025 Brooklyn Nets, and you’re trying to see with blood pouring out of your eyes. Congratulations to Peacock for getting the rights to that game; I’m sure that was a rating bonanza!

There’s perhaps nobody quite like Cam Thomas when it comes to making you have cope with your own disappointment. I feel quite the kinship with him. I too am a chucker. In pickup basketball and in life, him and I know one thing and that is to attempt. We look capable some days and a disaster the next, and more often than not we feel undervalued in our attempts to throw shit at the wall. I’m not sure how it feels deep inside, but me personally, I feel overrated. People, and especially my fiance, gas me up, but I feel more like an electric vehicle with a small range before my next charge lol. A charge that feels like it’s getting less and less efficient. I worry about becoming a recluse. A hermit. My mom became that and she died as such.

There’s something reassuring about, in death, having actually lived. I didn’t feel that my mom did and it makes it hard to cope with her death. My best friend’s dad died 6 years ago in a car crash. Very sudden and very tragic, but that man LIVED. He knew how to exist. My mom didn’t. She drew a support role from an early age, but she wasn’t particularly good at that role. She wasn’t particularly good at supporting her (various) men, and though she was a good mom in how you’d want to experience the world growing up (i.e. awarded us total freedom, loose punishments, no bedtime, fed us all the sweets and garbage foods), there was no structure. You see the validation in your kids’ faces beaming over stopping for pizza or lighting up from the glow of a TV screen in the middle of the night like a wholesome Poltergeist. But everyone gets older and your kids needs change, and my mom never really knew how to adapt to us not needing her for basic responsibilities anymore. And without being needed, she didn’t know what do with herself. And she just withered away until she died. I was always hoping I could get her grandkids or something, and create some sort of newfound purpose, but I was too late.

Today’s pick: JOEL EMBIID OVER 6.5 REBOUNDS

Perhaps it’s the minutes restrictions. Perhaps its the change in behavior around the rim, or the lack of care towards rim protecting. Perhaps it’s the matchups and the lack of true bigs to square off against so far. Perhaps he just doesn’t fuck with rebound anymore. Call it whatever you’d like, but Embiid has either NOT gone over this rebound total or BARELY gone over in every game so far this season. It feels like Vucevic, the 5-1 Bulls, and a few days of rest is exactly what the doctor ordered for Embiid to get motivated and ready to go over. There’s a lot of upside here to sour over (and perhaps ladder up) if Embiid is willing. Even if he’s not willing, he can still go over. But if he truly doesn’t care anymore, I’m going to regret not taking VJ Edgecombe over 4.5 rebounds like I had originally intended to lol.

Good luck to everyone in life, love and gambling, and I look forward to seeing y’all on the other side!

Pick record: 5-2 (no thank you Cam)