Nobody’s talking about this, so I will: Jayson Tatum is playing a decoy. More to the point, he is playing Jokić, Dončić, or a bit of both. Not all the time (such as when he’s doing one of those step-back threes with lots of time on the clock, but enough). So let’s call him Jayson Tatić.
Because on offense he’s pulling in double and triple teams and passing expertly to open men. Over and over again. And the passes turn into assists because he is connected to those men. That’s the way the Boston Celtićs work under Joe Mazzula. Connection is everything. They are a team of fully capable all-stars, each willing to give up their own ego and stats for the sake of the team.
So, while the talking heads and talking ‘casts go on about how poor Tatum’s offense seems to be, they miss the misdirection. They assume Jayson Tatum is always wanting to play hero ball, because he can, and because that’s they guy he is. They don’t get that he’s really Jayson Tatić’, and his feint is that he’s always going to shoot, that he’s always going to post up and go one-on-two or one-on-few. Meanwhile, what he’s really doing is pulling in a defense that gives him open men, all of whom he knows, because he’s connected to them psychically, audibly (they talk!) and manually. He is always working to pass, which he does expertly.
Yeah, he turns it over sometimes. So what. He gets assists because he’s a one-man wrecking crew of misdirection, especially when he gets downhill. And the man can pass.
When this series is over, and Boston takes it 4 to 3, 2, 1, or 0, and Jaylen Brown or Jrue Holiday get the MVP (like Andre Iguodala got the MVP a few years back), the Celtics’ success will owe in no small way to Jayson’s teamwork.
There’s a game tonight, so watch for it.
[Later…June 18, 2024…] Well, the Celtics got crushed almost immediately after I wrote the line above. But that didn’t matter, because in the next game, which happened last night in Boston, the Celtics crushed the Mavs and won the team’s record 18th championship. Tatum had 11 assists. And he might have had more if he and Jaylen Brown weren’t staying in a won game to pad their stats toward a possible MVP award. (That’s how it looked to me anyway.) Brown had eight assists and won the MVP (by a 4-3 margin, it turned out), deservedly because the award was for the whole series. What mattered more, though, was that the best scorer on the team dished the ball a lot.
A final word: as a Knicks fan from way back, it was painful to see Julius Randle on the ABC panel of talkers after the game. The man was obviously not comfortable in that role. But he did get a chance to say one of his jobs next season will be stopping the Celtics. Clearly the Knicks and the Celtics are now the cream of the East. Next season will be good for defense-loving fans of East Coast basketball.
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