Jayson Tatum is disrespected. That’s been the narrative in Boston over the last year. He doesn’t get enough MVP consideration. He isn’t one of the faces of the league. He was unfairly benched by Steve Kerr at the Olympics.
Tatum is undoubtedly a great player, but weeks like this give his critics ammo. Tatum has struggled mightily in the Celtics’ first two games against the New York Knicks, and it’s a big reason Boston is shockingly down 0-2 in the series.
Tatum had just 13 points in Wednesday’s 91-90 loss in Game 2. He is shooting 12-of-42 (28.6%) from the field in the series and 5-of-20 (25%) from three. While Tatum did have a big dunk to put the Celtics ahead with 18 seconds left in Game 2, he also committed the game-ending turnover in the final seconds, dribbling into traffic before throwing the ball into the hands of Mikal Bridges.
The Greg Hill Show opened Thursday morning discussing another stunning loss and Tatum’s disappearing act, with Chris Curtis wondering if the rest of the league sees Tatum more clearly for what he is. Listen to the full segment above.
“Tatum, you can't do this,” Curtis said. “You just can't. He had a good first round against the Magic, averaged over 30 points a game. But in these spots, you just can't disappear. You can't be scoreless. You can't have two points or whatever it was at halftime. It was an absolute disgrace.”
“He had a horrible game last night,” Greg Hill added. “I mean, he had a wide open three with three minutes left in that game. Nobody on him. Nobody anywhere near him.”
“Doesn’t this explain why Steve Kerr played Derrick White over Tatum in the Olympics when we all thought he was crazy?” Curtis continued. “I mean, look at how he's playing. We all thought Steve Kerr was just being a dink, and god knows he is one, but maybe the rest of the NBA is right, and we're just wearing Celtics-colored glasses when we watch the Jayson Tatum experience.
“…Maybe it's not the league hates Boston. Maybe it's that they just see in Tatum something that is a flaw that we overlook. And the reason why these conversations are so important, the reason why we did Kobe and Jordan and LeBron and all of these massive conversations when it comes to GOAT or greatest of all time in different varying positions in different sports… it's like pornography: you know it when you see it. You never doubted, even though Tom [Brady] didn't go a hundred percent of the time, when he had the ball, you never doubted that they were going to win. When the ball’s in Tatum's hands late in the game, you're lying to yourself if you think he's going to succeed.”