Tatum’s deficiencies have popped up again in these NBA Finals, but so have the qualities that make the Boston Celtics superstar so unique. “There are a lot of things in this job that I lose sleep over,” says Brad Stevens. “What someone thinks about Jayson Tatum or Jayson Tatum playing well is not one.”
One day before Game 1 of the 2024 NBA Finals, Jayson Tatum sat at a podium in TD Garden’s main interview room to field questions from the media. Minutes into the session, a reporter started his question with, “Jayson, you’ve probably been the most scrutinized player during this postseason …”
Listening, Tatum casually mimed a left-handed jump shot and turned his smiling face up toward an imaginary basket. “Think so?” he quipped, drawing laughter from a room full of people who scrutinize basketball players for a living.
During this playoff run alone—which has the Boston Celtics two wins away from their 18th championship—Tatum has seen and heard it all: speculation about his true happiness when All-Star teammate Jaylen Brown won Eastern Conference finals MVP; the erroneous contention that Brown (who is awesome, is still improving, and can be lauded sans comparison) is better than Tatum; and pessimism about Tatum’s 3-point shot, playmaking ability, and crunch-time chops. Meanwhile, as a 26-year-old who’s scored more points since 2021 than every player except Luka Doncic, Tatum keeps winning as the face of a historically dominant team. “I don’t take it personal,” he continued on that podium, echoing a response he gave at another press conference last month: “I don’t always agree with what [the media] says. Maybe I feel like they’re not watching everything else that I’m doing.”
Tatum’s performance in these Finals has both encapsulated and heightened the thorny questions about his game. Through two contests, he is Boston’s third-leading scorer despite taking 11 more shots than any of his teammates. Just about everything else—defense, rebounding, playmaking—has been spectacular. His team is up 2-0 because of that everything else, while it hasn’t yet needed the scoring.
It’s the kind of contradiction that makes boiling down Tatum’s importance more nebulous than it should be. He’s either lucky to be surrounded by so much talent, or he’s the primary reason Boston wins as consistently as it does. He’s simultaneously underrated and overrated, graded on a sliding scale with impossibly high standards. With so much success and disappointment on his (very long) résumé, the contextual parameters that make analyzing Tatum’s value a bit less complicated are often ignored. Without them, criticism and praise tend to veer outside the lines of rational thought, with each side heaping exaggerated claims upon the other.
“He doesn’t get the credit a lot of times, and he’s the first one to get all the blame if he doesn’t have a monster game,” says Celtics center Kristaps Porzingis. “It’s a little bit unfair to him.”
Tatum isn’t perfect and obviously shouldn’t be shielded from harsh evaluation, but no one has ever made first-team All-NBA in three straight seasons by accident. So much of the conversation—inside and outside the league—centers on the deficiencies that preclude him from being named among the absolute best of the best. But what’s often lost in that debate are the qualities that make Tatum, on and off the court, the player Boston always hoped he’d become. From his temperament and durability to his defensive prowess and positional versatility, it’s more than fair to consider Tatum, growing pains and all, the NBA’s platonic ideal of a franchise player.
“There are a lot of things in this job that I lose sleep over,” says Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens. “What someone thinks about Jayson Tatum or Jayson Tatum playing well is not one.”
Superstars can be a double-edged sword in the NBA. They’re talented enough to open doors for their team to compete at a very high level and then, directly or indirectly, they often apply pressure up and down the organization, which can sometimes complicate a timeline, team-building strategy, or style of play. To have one on a roster is a privilege and a headache. Blessing and curse. But since Tatum became a top-10 player, the Celtics haven’t had to be reactive or accommodating to any hidden agendas.
He enjoys the types of perks any MVP candidate who’s already earned nearly $200 million would. But they don’t come at the cost of his organization’s ability to make shrewd decisions. In order to build the team they currently have, the Celtics needed cap flexibility, draft equity, and tradable assets. Tatum never created an environment that compelled them to sacrifice those things for short-term gratification. He doesn’t traffic in public microaggressions or privately exhibit fickle behavior; his competitive drive is not laced with mistrust or restlessness.
“Most of the star NBA players are enabled by everyone, including their teams. They’re egged on by their agents, their parents, people in their orbit who are trying to capitalize on their significant leverage,” one league source told The Ringer. “There are a variety of ways that a superstar can make things difficult. There’s a lot of different ways they can fuck it up. And Jayson is not doing any of those destructive things.”
He doesn’t want to be the center of attention, nor does he thrive on a big personality. “He’s really relaxed, quiet, a little bit reserved, easy to be around,” Payton Pritchard says. “He’s not, like, showboating and acting like he’s the best. I think he’s confident knowing who he is, so he doesn’t feel the need to do that.”
All that goes a long way toward creating the type of even-tempered culture Boston has enjoyed this season. It matters. So does his durability. Tatum has logged 4,290 minutes in 110 playoff games. The only names in NBA history to top either mark before their 27th birthday are Kobe Bryant and Tony Parker. The only players who’ve amassed more win shares are LeBron James, Magic Johnson, Tim Duncan, Kobe, Kawhi Leonard, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In the postseason, all time, he leads everyone 26 and under in total defensive rebounds and is second in points.
Tatum has not only already appeared in two NBA Finals and five Eastern Conference finals, but he’s also never missed a playoff game, never been on a team that missed the playoffs, and failed to advance out of the first round only one time (in 2021, against the Nets, without Brown). Now look how his postseason numbers stack up against everyone else since 2018: Tatum ranks first in points by a sizable margin, and he’s scored about 600 more than LeBron and Steph Curry and 700 more than Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Some of this is injury luck and calls to mind what Kevin Durant said in April when he was asked about his own ability to stay on the court this season: “No players flopped into my legs this year.”
But a lot of it is also a testament to his discipline and maturity. Celtics athletic trainer and physical therapist Nick Sang is essentially Tatum’s year-round personal trainer. The two are close friends who’ve established a game-day routine—from weight lifting and soft-tissue treatment at Tatum’s suburban home to a recovery beverage hours after the final buzzer—and that’s been critical over the past few years. “He spends so much time taking care of his body and doing the right steps and really committing,” Sang recently told The Boston Globe. “Really, we both have the same goal. He wants to maximize his potential, and I want to help him get there.”
From the perspective of everyone who relies on him to perform at a consistently high level, Tatum’s steadiness is rare and appreciated. “He never wants to sit out,” Jrue Holiday says. “I’ve played with a lot of players. When you have your best player who wants to play every single game, take the game that seriously, even if they’re banged up with an ankle, knee, whatever it is, still goes out there and plays, I think it shows a lot.”
The sentiment was recently echoed by Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla. “He’s there for every single practice, every single game. Loves being coached,” he says. “Your franchise player has to be a cornerstone of what you do. … I think he makes everyone’s life easier. There’s no one like him.”
Tatum’s on-court dichotomy, though, makes things complicated. Modesty only gets you so far. People expect the best player on a championship team to score efficiently in the face of a set defense that’s designed to slow them down, and Tatum’s shotmaking just isn’t on the same plane as his fellow high-usage contemporaries. Out of the top 20 players in total playoff minutes since 2018, only four have an effective field goal percentage that’s lower than their shot quality (or expected effective field goal percentage): Tatum, Marcus Smart, Draymond Green, and Holiday.
That trend has carried over from Boston’s last three postseason runs and fuels skepticism about his ability to lead a very good team over the hump when it matters most. In these playoffs, Tatum’s isolation numbers have been bad, his 3-point shooting has fallen off a cliff, and his shot selection has, at times, been questionable. Tatum’s EFG percentage this postseason ranks 42nd out of 46 players with at least 100 field goal attempts. Not great! Throw it all together, and what you get is an easy target.
“People say Tatum’s really good at [making tough shots], then see him not be good at it, and then forget about all the other good qualities that he has,” a league source told The Ringer. “And that’s kind of a bizarre cycle that he’s in.”
At the same time, when his own shot isn’t falling, Tatum has learned how to cede and redistribute his scoring chances. Not every superstar is adaptable enough to thrive in a winning environment alongside an exclamation point like Brown, who needs the ball in his hands to really shine. Tatum clearly can. He can also relinquish responsibility to Derrick White and Holiday and still have a positive impact off the ball, setting screens and rebounding. (There are 82 players in these playoffs who’ve had at least 50 rebound chances—i.e., they have been the closest player to the ball at any point between when the ball has crossed below the rim to when it is fully rebounded. Tatum has grabbed 70.5 percent of his, which trails only Anthony Davis.)
“It’s not all about scoring. I can be the guy rebounding and getting assists and drawing attention, right?” Tatum says. “Maybe you don’t score all the points, but you do all the things that put your guys in the best position to win.”
The attention Tatum draws with the ball remains top tier. This isn’t new, but how he deals with it, consistently, is. We’re only two and a half years removed from the press conference where Smart called out Tatum and Brown: “Every team is programmed and studied to stop Jayson and Jaylen. I think everybody’s scouting report is to make those guys pass the ball. They don’t want to pass the ball.”
Tatum isn’t Tyrese Haliburton or Nikola Jokic, but he’s grown to be one of the more cunning and trustworthy playmakers at his position. There is a better balance between scoring and passing now, with Tatum showing more ability to adapt to the way he’s being guarded. “He’s not one that just settles,” Mavs coach Jason Kidd said last week.
Tatum’s awareness has bloomed. Instead of prioritizing a desire to attack mismatches one-on-one against a set defense, he’s regularly recognizing how his power creates advantages elsewhere—a critical development that’s helped Boston achieve one of the greatest offenses ever seen. It was evident throughout Game 2, when the Mavericks kept baiting him to force the issue, put his head down, and shoot against a defense that kept surrounding him with multiple defenders.
“I mean, every time I’d take a couple dribbles, three people were right there,” Tatum says. “So we got a bunch of shooters on our team and guys that can space the floor. So it wasn’t like I had to do anything spectacular. It was just about finding the open guy.”
Almost everything was in a crowd. He pushed in transition to create mismatches. He made timely cuts that collapsed Dallas’s defense. He faked a ball screen to draw two defenders off of one of the best 3-point shooters alive:
This was a superstar who understood the effect his gravity had on every single possession and then harnessed it to benefit everyone else. He missed a bunch of open shots and couldn’t convert layups he normally does, but very few of his decisions were forced or reluctant. He’s the fulcrum for a reason. In these playoffs, Tatum leads the Celtics in passes and generates four more points per game off of his assists than anyone else on the team. His 83.4 touches per game are also first by a humongous margin.
“A lot of times, if you can generate shots for other people and make the defense have to respect those guys,” Tatum said, “it eventually opens a lot of other things up for you later in the game that you can take advantage of. [Dallas] really just kind of tests your discipline. They test, are you going to make the right play over and over and over again, even if it’s not resulting in you getting the shots or you scoring all the points. They are trying to test if human nature is going to play a part of wanting to get yourself going, instead of doing all the things that is making the game easier for the team.”
During the regular season, whenever Tatum passed out of a pick-and-roll, the Celtics generated 111.4 points per 100 possessions, which was third best out of all players who averaged at least five such plays per game, according to Synergy Sports. In the playoffs, when Tatum is the ball handler on a pick-and-roll that ends in a field goal attempt, foul, turnover, or immediate shot for a teammate, Boston generates 118.9 points per 100 possessions, which ranks first out of 26 players who’ve tallied at least 50 such plays.
“He opens up our offense and kind of unlocks everything,” Al Horford says. “Once he drives, even if he doesn’t get the assist, because of so much attention that he gets, one of us is going to benefit from it, and then we’re just playing from there and our offense just kind of flows because of him.”
In this postseason, Boston’s offensive rating is 120 with Tatum on the court and 101.7 when he sits. That 18.3-point difference is the highest on the team. (Horford is next, at 10.) “He’s always the focal point for the other team,” says Porzingis. “I’m third, fourth, fifth, sixth on the list. That takes a lot of pressure off me. I can have a lot more open looks. That’s credit to JB and JT but especially JT.”
Before Holiday joined the Celtics, he was an opponent watching from afar. Up close, he’s noticed all the ways Tatum impacts winning, beyond the high scoring average. “I do think playmaking, he’s done a really good job, and that’s something I never really saw from him before,” Holiday said on Finals media day. “He’s never afraid to take the big shot. He’s never been afraid of that big moment. I think making the right plays in moments is something I’ve noticed since I’ve been his teammate.”
While it’s fair to be dubious about his ability to carry the same load as Doncic or Jokic, or consistently make the tough shots Kevin Durant and Kawhi Leonard have on teams that can contend for a title, Tatum’s grade A versatility on both ends makes him a paragon of convenience, someone who’s relatively simple to build around and can function at pretty much any position in almost any type of lineup, with all-around intangibles that directly influence winning. His plus-166 leads the postseason; the only player with a higher plus-minus in the playoffs since 2018 is Steph Curry (plus-433 to Tatum’s plus-432). That’s not a coincidence.
On defense, he’s long and quick enough to stay in front of guards and tall and physical enough to handle most big men. In Game 1 of the Finals, he was a major part of Boston’s game plan. At a chiseled 6-foot-8, Tatum was asked to guard Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II, essentially neutralizing one of the most effective and destructive pick-and-roll tandems in basketball. That also allowed the Celtics to stick Horford and Porzingis on either P.J. Washington or Derrick Jones Jr., which mucked up Dallas’s spacing and disturbed its rhythm.
Tatum isn’t an average defender. He’s an invaluable asset, able to switch any screen, protect the rim as a helping low man, and fend off 7-footers when they bum-rush the offensive glass. He’s intuitive and doesn’t take plays off. Don’t be surprised if he makes an All-Defensive team sooner rather than later. Dallas learned this in Game 2, when Kidd made the curious decision to target Tatum. It didn’t go well.
There aren’t a lot of teams who can look at their best offensive creator and not also see a limited defender who, at the very least, can’t thrive without a particular scheme or supporting cast that’s been pieced together to offset his shortcomings. From a roster construction standpoint, the flexibility that Tatum provides is priceless.
For him, it’s all a mutually beneficial situation. His teammates are awesome and complementary. But he also lifts them higher than they’d otherwise be by assuming so many overt and subtle responsibilities on any given play. And at 26, with room to grow, he still hasn’t reached his prime. A title before he gets there might not silence every critique made about his game, but it should foreground all the ways he makes life easier for everyone around him—which is a telltale mark that all-time greats share.
“We always talk about ‘Do whatever it takes for however long it takes,’” Tatum says. “If I need to have 16 potential assists every single night and that’s what puts us in the best position to win and it doesn’t mean I’m the leading scorer, by all means, if that gives us the best chance to win, sign me up.”