Jayson Tatum wasn’t good enough in the NBA Finals. In Game 6, with the Celtics facing elimination, he had his worst game of the series, scoring 13 points on 6-of-18 shooting while turning the ball over five times. He scored two points in the second half.
That is a tough pill to swallow for the Celtics and their fans. Everyone wanted to believe this was Tatum’s time to soar to the highest level of NBA superstardom, to knock off the old-guard Warriors and carve out his own place in Celtics lore. Instead, he face-planted.
What happened to Jayson Tatum?
It is fair to criticize Tatum. It is fair to say he needs to learn from this and be better if and when the Celtics get back to this stage.
What doesn’t seem fair is drawing big-picture conclusions about Tatum and his career. Just as one example of how down some Boston fans are on Tatum right now, more than 40% of respondents to this Greg Hill Show poll said the Celtics cannot win a championship with Tatum as their best player.
To some extent, the despondency is understandable. If Tatum played like the First Team All-NBA player he was in the regular season, the Celtics would probably at least be preparing for a Game 7 right now. They may have already won the title themselves.
But let’s take a collective deep breath. While Tatum has played a lot of playoff basketball already in his career, he is still just 24 years old. And player development does not end at 24 years old. A star player faltering on the biggest stage at age 24 does not mean he will falter on that stage for the rest of his career.
Steph Curry, who is now in the discussion of top 10 players ever after his Finals MVP performance this year, had yet to even appear in a playoff game at age 24. At age 25, he fell flat in a second-round series against the San Antonio Spurs, averaging 18.2 points on 36.3% shooting over the final four games of the series, including a meager nine-point performance in Game 5 with the series tied 2-2.
LeBron James, now widely considered the second-greatest player in NBA history, had several tough series before finally breaking through to win his first title in 2012, at age 27. In his first Finals appearance at age 22, he averaged 22 points on 35.6% shooting while committing 5.8 turnovers per game. In his second at age 26, he averaged just 17.8 points on 32.1% shooting while committing four turnovers per game.
Tatum averaged 21.5 points on 36.7% shooting with 3.8 turnovers per game in this series. It wasn’t good enough. But look at those numbers above. It’s also not unheard of for a young player to have a series like this and still go on to do great things and win titles.
Turnovers were a problem for Tatum all postseason. He averaged 4.2 per game. He had never averaged more than three per game in any regular season or any previous postseason. In the Finals, finishing in close bizarrely became a problem. Tatum shot just 31.5% from inside the three-point arc. He has shot 49.8% on twos in his career. He was shooting 49.1% in these playoffs prior to the Finals.
Maybe he choked. Maybe he was fatigued (he did lead the league in total minutes played this season). Maybe his shoulder really did affect his play. Maybe next time he won’t struggle in those two areas where he’s generally been pretty good.
“Learn and understand who he is in this league,” coach Ime Udoka said when asked about Tatum after Game 6. “You're an All-Star, All-NBA First Team guy for a reason. This is only the start of how you're going to be guarded and the attention you're going to draw. … For him, it's just continuing to grow and understand you're going to see this the rest of your career. This is just a start.
“The growth he showed as a playmaker this year and in certain areas, I think this is the next step for him. Figuring that out, getting to where some of the veterans are that have seen everything and took their lumps early in their careers. Like I said, very motivated guy that works extremely hard, high IQ, intelligent guy that will learn from this and figure it out. I think it will propel him to go forward, definitely motivate him.”
It’s not like Tatum has never stepped up in the playoffs. He deservedly won the first-ever Larry Bird Trophy as MVP of the Eastern Conference Finals this year. He went into Milwaukee and dropped 46 points with the Celtics facing elimination two rounds ago. He scored 50 and 40 points in back-to-back games against Brooklyn last year.
Tatum struggled in his first NBA Finals appearance. There’s no way around it. It’s not the only reason the Celtics lost (their bench being a black hole most of the series was a major problem that needs addressing this offseason), but it was a significant factor for sure.
It doesn’t mean Tatum will never get it done on this stage, though. It doesn’t mean the Celtics can’t win with him as their best player.
NBA history is filled with great players who have “taken their lumps,” as Udoka put it, before breaking through. The Celtics have to hope Tatum will be the next.
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