Jayson Tatum Is Earning His Status as One of the Best Players In the World

Jayson TatumJesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images

For three quarters, Jayson Tatum couldn’t find the bottom of the net to save his life (or the Boston Celtics’ season).

Over those three frames and the first seven-and-a-half minutes of the fourth, he was 1-of-14 for seven points. He missed all six of his three-point attempts. And after entering halftime with a seven-point lead, Tatum’s struggles finally caught up to the Cs in the third. At the start of the fourth, Boston was down two, and bleakness was setting in.

The Philadelphia 76ers were still up two halfway through that final frame. And then Tatum caught fire and carried his team to a 95-86 road victory in Game 6.

With 4:14 to play, Tatum finally hit his first three and put Boston up one. On the Celtics’ next possession, he hit a step-back triple that stretched the lead to four. With under two minutes left, he drilled a third three—one that pushed the lead to eight—and the game suddenly felt out of reach for Philadelphia.

For good measure, he hit one more bomb with less than 40 seconds left.

To have a first 43-and-a-half minutes like Tatum did and still be able to drop four crucial threes in the final minutes takes more than steely nerves. It takes the confidence of one of the best basketball players in the world, which is exactly what Tatum claims to be.

“I’m … humbly, one of the best basketball players in the world,” Tatum said on the broadcast postgame. “Go through struggles. Go through slumps. It’s a long game. And thankfully, I got some great teammates that held it down. [Malcolm] Brogdon, JB [Jaylen Brown], [Marcus] Smart, Al [Horford]. And they all trusted me, right? They told me keep taking great looks. It’s going to fall. Keep impacting the game in other ways. And all that matters was that we won this game.”

They were right. The shots did start falling. And contrary to how Tatum played through much of 2022-23, they started falling in the clutch.

In the regular season, Tatum was 17th in total field-goal attempts taken in the clutch (defined by the league as the final five minutes of games within five points). Among the top 50 in attempts, he was 44th in field-goal percentage and 43rd in three-point percentage.

An inability to play like “one of the best basketball players in the world” during the highest-leverage moments could doom Boston in the postseason. And prior to Thursday’s win, it was an underwhelming 3-4 in games that entered clutch time.

The Celtics pulled to an even .500 thanks to Tatum bucking his trend of struggling in those moments. And if this version is here to stay, Boston is very much back in the title hunt.

After the win, its chances to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals skyrocketed to 65 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s projection system.

Something that may have been lost in Tatum’s quote, though, was the desire to impact the game in ways outside of scoring.

That’s what players in the top tiers do. And that’s exactly what Tatum did over the first 43 minutes of Game 6.

Despite being 1-of-14, he was tied for the team lead with nine rebounds. He had a team-high six assists. He had two blocks and a steal.

And when the dam finally broke on his shooting, that led to a pretty impressive final line: 19 points, nine, six, two and two. Even with the shooting struggles (he finished 5-of-21 from the field), he was a plus-two for the night.

In the end, it was a superstar performance, even if it took a while to get there.

We’ve known for a while that that’s what Tatum is. A bona fide superstar. His run to the Finals last season probably sealed that. Finishing fourth in MVP voting this season backs up his “one of the best basketball players in the world” claim too.

But no player is flawless. That includes, of course, Tatum. If he still has some boxes to check, contributing without scoring and rediscovering his knack for big plays in the clutch are probably two of them.

On Thursday, with Boston’s campaign on the line, he at least got out the No. 2 pencil. In Game 7, he can fill those boxes in completely.