Jayson Tatum was the Celtics’ savior … and the Sixers’ worst nightmare

BOSTON — It was, in a twisted way, perfect, Jayson Tatum rising over Joel Embiid for one three-pointer in the third quarter, then over Embiid for another, then over De’Anthony Melton for a third. After that last long jump shot ripped through the netting, one camera caught and centered Tatum as he strutted back toward halfcourt and raised his arms and shouted a single, defiant question to no one in particular: “What?” The fans filling TD Garden were now as loud as they’d been at any point Sunday, chanting their belief that Tatum was the NBA’s true MVP this season, the Celtics leading by 28 on their way to a delicious 112-88 victory and the Eastern Conference finals, and the Sixers trudged back to the bench for a meaningless timeout, slumped and beaten long before the final buzzer.

This was the finest hour for Tatum, one of the finest for any player in a franchise rich in such excellence, and the Sixers were little more than humiliated witnesses to it. Fifty-one points — the most in any Game 7 in NBA history. Such an achievement would have been remarkable enough if Tatum had scored the most points in any Game 7 in Celtics history. They’ve won 17 championships, after all. But no, the Sixers were powerless to prevent him from writing his name in the league’s record books, from making Embiid and James Harden and Doc Rivers and the rest of them look like a second-rate CYO team.

“JT just got it going,” Celtics forward Jaylen Brown said. “Get out of that man’s way. There was nothing they could do to stop him.”

» READ MORE: Joel Embiid, James Harden sink as Celtics’ Jayson Tatum soars in Sixers’ Game 7 loss

Embiid and Tatum are close friends. They were also the inverse of one another Sunday — Tatum with his 51, Embiid with a mere 15 points, with no discernible impact on the game after halftime, with nothing to hold over Tatum the next time they train together in the offseason. They’re so tight that Tatum even took the time to FaceTime him after the Celtics’ victory in Game 3, after Embiid received his MVP trophy and teared up at center court. “I’ve seen him develop,” Tatum said, “and I’ve seen the hard work that went into him being MVP.”

There’s a different kind of work, though, that goes into being the sort of athlete who doesn’t shrink when the stakes are at their highest. There’s a psychological and emotional component, a maturity, that Embiid has yet to display with any consistency, and that MVP award should be small consolation for a player who was a superstar in name only Sunday, who can’t coax his team past the second round.

Tatum is just 25 and probably can still do some growing in that regard, too. But it’s impossible to dispute that he’s ahead of Embiid. From shaking off his horrible first 44 minutes of Game 6 with those four late three-pointers to torching the Sixers on Sunday, he was everything that the centerpiece of a championship-caliber team is supposed to be. Everything that Embiid wasn’t.

“It was definitely on my mind that I had played as bad as it could get,” Tatum said. “To be honest, they had us on the ropes in Game 6 — end of that third, going into the fourth, the crowd was into it. They had us, and we figured out a way to win.”

» READ MORE: Joel Embiid, James Harden choke in a gutless showing in Boston. ‘The Process’ fails again.

The Celtics didn’t figure it out as much as they relied on their best player to bail them out. Sometimes, that’s it. Sometimes, there’s no grand strategy that a coach can employ, no magic move that inspires a team. Sometimes, it’s just that simple: Our greatest player met the measure of the moment. Yours didn’t. Our guy was tougher and better when it counted. Your guy didn’t touch the ball for a close-out game’s final four minutes. We’re going to the conference finals. You’re going to Cabo. Enjoy.

That’s been the story of the Sixers for most of this last decade, really. For all the sound logic of Sam Hinkie’s process and Daryl Morey’s team-building methods, for all the opportunities to draft or keep players who deep down had the stuff to thrive when winning time arrived, the Sixers kept overlooking the factors and intangibles that matter most in those situations.

They were conventional when they shouldn’t have been and bold when they didn’t need to be. They took Ben Simmons over Brandon Ingram or Brown. They traded away Jimmy Butler. They wasted Al Horford. They had Mikal Bridges and traded him because they were so desperate for an extra draft pick. And as Sunday reminded everyone in the worst of ways, in 2017 they were so fixated on acquiring a combo guard to pair with Simmons that they struck that infamous deal with the Celtics to move up to draft Markelle Fultz. No, the Sixers were never getting Tatum in that 2017 draft. The Celtics were taking him all along. But the fact that Danny Ainge was able to pants Bryan Colangelo for a first-round pick and still end up with the far better player was just one of too many costly and avoidable mistakes that the Sixers have made since 2013.

Yes, they shot themselves in both feet every step of the way, until Jayson Tatum grabbed the pistol from them Sunday in Game 7. He was at the center of some of the most distressing hours of this franchise’s history. He brought an end to several periods of Sixers basketball — this game, this series, this entire era — that ultimately did nothing more than inflict pain to the people who care about this team. How fitting, and what timing. Everyone who has followed the Sixers for this last strange and empty decade, everyone who had followed them for years before that, was yearning to see what a true superstar does in the biggest of games, in the biggest of moments, on the biggest of stages. And you know what? Everyone did.