Opinion
Thursday, 16 June 2022. With his team down 13, Jayson Tatum heads to the bench with 1:03 left in Game 6 of the NBA finals. Distressed, he sits at the end of the bench, hunched over and looking at nothing but the iconic Celtic green parquet floor.
After taking down Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, and Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jimmy Butler in consecutive play-off rounds, it felt as if Tatum had established himself as one of the league’s best. Unfortunately for him, when the Celtics needed him most, he was nowhere to be seen in the finals.
Slowly the clock continues to tick down. Steph Curry begins to tear up and the confetti starts to fall. Yet Tatum remains frozen on the bench, statue-like, unable to lift his head up to view the most disappointing moment of his career to date.
Coming into the 2022-23 season, it was sink-or-swim time for Tatum. Either he was going to show us that his play-off run wasn’t a fluke and he deserved to be mentioned with the league’s elite, or he would crater in and no longer be the superstar we thought he was.
From the get-go Tatum looked motivated, stronger, smarter, angrier and ready to beat whatever was put in front of him. Being the best player on the team with the best record had him leading the MVP discussion, and quickly those who doubted him after the disaster of his finals performance were no longer questioning if he could be the guy.
Fast-forward to 10 December and the Celtics returned to Chase Centre for their first attempt at avenging their finals loss against the Golden State Warriors.
While Tatum had gone head to head with other players in the MVP conversation – players like such as Luka Doncic, Joel Embiid, Jimmy Butler, Ja Morant, Nikola Jokic and Kevin Durant and beaten them all.
However, whether he could get over the mental hurdle of playing the Warriors again and the physical defence that plagued him throughout the finals was a serious question mark hanging over Tatum’s head.
Five minutes into the game and it was as if everything that had happened before this game was irrelevant. Suddenly the Jayson Tatum who looked as if he was going to be MVP was gone. It was as if he had reverted straight back to the player he was in the finals.
His wide-open threes weren’t getting close to dropping, his finishing at the rim was appalling and he played with the same level of carelessness when in possession of the ball that saw him set the record for most turnovers in a play-off run.
Tatum finished the game with 18 points on 6/21 shooting while also having only two assists, by far his worst performance of the season.
After the game, Celtics players were quick to claim that they were too much in their own heads and were too focused on getting revenge for the finals loss. Whether that’s true or not is one thing, but the fact is it looked as if the Warriors had Tatum’s number and had well and truly psyched him out.
The Celtics would go on to lose four of their next five games, and suddenly all the credit that they had banked through the first 32 games was gone. They went from sure favourites to get out of the east to a team low on confidence.
While it took the team a bit of time to get back into a rhythm, eventually they found their feet, and 40 days after the embarrassment against Golden State, the Celtics would welcome them to their home floor.
All eyes were on Jayson Tatum. He just scored 51 points against the Hornets two days earlier and he looked as if he was back in the running for MVP, while the Celtics as a team were riding a seven-game winning streak despite Jaylen Brown missing the last three matches.
None of that mattered though. All anyone was wondering was: could the Celtics and more specifically Jayson Tatum tame the mental demons that clearly held them back in the last match-up?
One quarter in and it wasn’t looking great for Tatum. A couple of nice assists covered over some of the cracks, but in reality he again looked like a shell of himself. His finishing at the rim was again missing, his wide-open threes didn’t even look like going in and he was careless with the ball. His only basket for the period was on transition after he picked off a pass from Andrew Wiggins.
The second quarter was no prettier. Another transition basket and a three put him in a bit of a rhythm, but it was nothing spectacular. The biggest positive was he didn’t let his poor finishing scare him off as he continued to drive to the basket, drawing plenty of fouls and going to the line.
With Steph Curry hitting a half-court buzzer-beating shot to close out the first half, the Celtics, who at one point had a double-digit lead, looked deflated.
Opening up a nine-point lead in the third, the Warriors looked comfortable, and again Tatum didn’t look his best. Unlike the finals though, he didn’t stop driving; he continued to go to the line and keep the score ticking over.
Suddenly Tatum had 21 points to go along with 12 rebounds and five assists at the end of the third quarter. By no stretch was he at his best, but his stat line would suggest otherwise.
The other notable number on his box score was the number of minutes he had tallied up. Breaking up his normal rotations, Celtics interim coach Joe Mazzulla had left Tatum in for the entirety of the third period, and with the Cs down seven points, Tatum wasn’t sitting to begin the fourth.
Again, Tatum didn’t look outstanding, scoring only one bucket in the first eight minutes of the quarter.
Down four with 3:40 left in the game, Tatum took advantage of a Malcolm Brogdon screen to get a mismatch with Curry, where he would take a smooth step-back jumper from the mid-range to cut the lead to two.
A leak-out dunk later and a superb pass to set Al Horford up for a corner three and suddenly it was a one-point game. A Jaylen Brown three would send the game to overtime – the Celtics had five more minutes to try to finally beat this Warriors team.
While poor late-game execution saw the Celtics win by only three points, in reality Tatum hit the dagger three and two clutch free throws to put the game out of reach with 38.2 seconds left.
Overall, on face value and when compared to some of his better games, you’d have to say Tatum didn’t play up to his high standards. But he finished the game with 34 points, six assists and a career-high 19 rebounds, all while going 12-12 at the free-throw line.
For most players that would be a career night, yet for Tatum you could tell that there was so much more room for improvement. He missed several wide-open threes, couldn’t finish through contact and had a game-high seven turnovers.
While it may sound critical to harp on about the negatives, in a sense it’s a testament to just how far Tatum has come and why he deserves to be in the running for MVP.
From the best players in the league we expect flawless games, and in reality Tatum’s game against the Warriors had plenty of flaws. Yet he proved so much.
Tatum played 48 out of a possible 52 minutes, not going to the bench once in the second half or in overtime. He showed he can still tick the score over even when his three-point shot isn’t falling and when he’s not finishing his lay-ups, and he refused to shy away from the ball despite the seven turnovers.
Everything that went wrong for Tatum in the finals crept into his game again against the Warriors, yet he found a way to still be the best player on the floor and pull out the victory.
The final score will only show a three-point Boston win, but the reality is they can take confidence in knowing even when he’s not at his best, Tatum can find a way to be a positive impact. Something that, come play-off time, may be crucial if this Celtics team is to hang banner 18.
It may just be one game, but performances like this are why it may really be Tatum time in the NBA and why, come season’s end, he may be hoisting the MVP trophy.
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