Stats are for losers. At least that was the case Tuesday night at TD Garden for Celtics star Jayson Tatum in his team’s ugly, lifeless 115-103 defeat at the hands of the 76ers, Philadelphia taking a 3-2 lead in the Eastern Conference playoff series.
Tatum’s box score shows that the man who finished fourth in the MVP voting this season – three spots behind worthy Philly award-winner Joel Embiid – put up 36 points, 10 rebounds and five assists in the very much losing effort. The numbers might lead some to believe that Tatum did his job and carried his share of the Boston load.
Poppycock, he absolutely did not!
Once again Tatum got off to a putrid start, missing his first five shots and going just 3-of-11 overall in the first half against Philly for a minus-14 effort through two quarters. This came on the heels of a 1-for-9 shooting effort in Boston’s Game 4 loss in Philly in which Tatum missed his first eight shots of the game.
This is a problem. A real problem.
Tatum is supposed to be one of the four best basketball players on the planet. He’s supposed to be the focal point of everything that Boston does and is capable of doing. He’s supposed to be some new-age Boston blend of Kobe Bryant and Paul Pierce. He’s supposed to be, as Reggie Jackson famously was for the Yankees back in the day, the straw that stirs the Celtics’ offensive drink.
Right now he’s one of those frustrating environmentally-friendly straws that falls apart and doesn’t really do the job. It’s a continuation of concerns kick started last postseason, Tatum’s inconsistent production within games, within series and coming up short at times in both late-game situations and series when his team needs him the most.
All Tatum was left to do this time around was explain away and attempt to rationalize another postseason game in which he didn’t come close to living up to his elite expectations.
“It’s a long game,” Tatum told reporters afterwards. “Shots eventually going to fall and we got some of them to go down. Just didn’t necessarily start in the first quarter how I would have liked. But we’ve just got to keep playing, and that’s why it’s four quarters and it’s a long game.”
Oh it was indeed a long game. A long, frustrating, fruitless, tough-to-watch game that left the boo birds raining down on the TD Garden court.
That Tatum finished with 36 points is meaningless. He was part of the problem in the losing effort, the worst of the postseason for Boston as coach Joe Mazzulla so accurately noted.
Despite scoring his 36 points after the yet-again slow start, Tatum still finished a Boston-worst minus-26 for the game. That’s an ugh-worthy ugly performance if there ever was one.
And oh by the way, Embiid may have “only” finished with 33 points, but he was a game-best plus-21 in a truly MVP-worthy performance to help carry his team to within a game of the Eastern Conference Finals.
Tatum certainly wasn’t the only problem for the Celtics. Jaylen Brown continues to get into foul trouble. Al Horford continues to be unable to find his three-point stroke (0-for-7, zero points Tuesday night) that made him one of the best behind the arc in the NBA this season. Robert Williams is anything but the electric force he’s supposed to be on both ends of the court. And Boston’s bench and role players didn’t do much to help out their struggling stars.
This was a total system failure in many ways.
But, in the NBA, winning and losing so often starts and ends with a team’s star. Tatum is the front man for the Boston band of basketball brothers seeking Banner 18. He’s the guy in all the TV commercials during the basketball breaks, doing his best Peyton Manning impression.
Tatum’s side hustle as a mass-marketing star seems to be going well. It’s his day job – or in this case his night job – that isn’t getting it done. Forget his points or losing stats, Tatum is not showing up early in games. He’s not there when his team needs him to set the tone.
And now, a week after the Bruins were disappointingly bounced from the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Celtics face their own unexpectedly early elimination game in Philadelphia on Thursday night.
“We’ve been in this position before, and we’re a confident group because we’ve done it,” Tatum said of Boston coming back from a 3-2 series deficit last postseason against Milwaukee. “We know what it takes and we should be confident, right? Everybody believes in themselves, believes in the work they’ve put in so it’s nothing impossible, it’s just one game. Just take it one game at a time and be ready on Thursday.”
Exactly. Tatum needs to be ready to go on Thursday night.
Ready to do his superstar share from opening tip to final whistle. Ready to do whatever it takes to win.
Ready to be what he’s supposed to be. Ready to be what he simply hasn’t been so far this spring.