The Celtics are built around Jayson Tatum for a reason: 8 takeaways from Celtics vs. Bulls
Tatum dominated Saturday's game in Chicago from start to finish.
Jayson Tatum put together his most dominant performance of the season so far as the Celtics rolled to a 123-98 win in a bounce-back performance against the Bulls.
Here are the takeaways.
Jayson Tatum reminded everyone why the Celtics are built around him.
The MVP case for Tatum has been dinged very slightly in recent weeks as his counting stats slipped a bit (he’s no longer averaging 30 points per game).
However, Saturday’s game — which doubled as a new season-high in scoring and Tatum’s first triple-double of the year with an obscene 43 points, 16 rebounds and 10 assists — was a reminder that there probably is not a single player in the NBA that the Celtics would rather have, and that if you wanted to make an MVP case for Tatum, the road isn’t as twisty as some might think.
After all, Tatum is doing unprecedented things — no Celtics player had ever recorded a 40-15-10 triple-double prior to Saturday, and only one other NBA player in NBA history had ever recorded that total with nine 3-pointers (that player was James Harden, who once posted 53-16-17 with nine triples).
Tatum told NBC Sports Boston’s Abby Chin that Joe Mazzulla challenges him sometimes.
“He’s really coachable, and he wants to play the right way, and he wants to do the right thing, and he’s constantly fighting that balance of wanting to do what we ask of him, but sometimes you have to tell him to be himself,” Mazzulla said. “He does a really good job of balancing that, but there’s nights where I can kind of tell that he’s in a different groove and you just work to give it to him.
“I thought it was one of those nights and he took advantage of it. So you just kind of pick and choose your spots.”
Tatum is wholly unique as an offensive talent at the moment — nobody else can shoot, drive, post-up, attack off the bounce, run an offense and pass like he can. Few can defend as many positions as Tatum, and nobody else can combine Tatum’s level of offensive versatility with that defense.
The Celtics have given us no reason to believe they are anything less than the best team in the NBA. The best player on that team — and the fulcrum of everything they do — is Jayson Tatum, and the guess here is that Celtics would rather have him than any other superstar in the NBA (yes over Nikola Jokic, whose fit isn’t quite as easy, and yes over Giannis Antetokounmpo who can’t space the floor, although Antetokounmpo would certainly run rampant with the Celtics’ level of shooting).
That won’t be an MVP case for every voter, and it might not be an MVP case for enough to get Tatum across the line at the end of the season, but Celtics fans shouldn’t care too much if it leads to a title. They are watching an all-time player who, by the end, will stand out historically even on a franchise with a long and storied list of all-time players.
Tatum’s team thinks he’s underrated.
That’s not to say the Celtics will shy away from making Tatum’s MVP case for him.
Quite the opposite, actually: Mazzulla said Tatum is “absolutely, no question, 100 percent” overlooked in MVP discussions.
“I think he’s been doing it for such a long time, and he’s on a really good team, and I think that hurts him sometimes,” Mazzulla said. “But his ability to do what he does on a great team, I think, says more about who he is as a player.”
Kristaps Porzingis agreed emphatically with Mazzulla.
“He’s not a PR player,” Porzingis said. “He doesn’t do everything for PR. He actually plays the right way. He doesn’t need to always score 50. He’s hungry for winning, and there’s a big difference.”
Porzingis does, however, think he got robbed.
Porzingis appreciates Tatum’s mentality and his willingness to play within the context of a team that can win titles when everyone buys in.
He does not, however, appreciate what he sees as thievery from Tatum.
“It looks like they stole a couple of my rebounds and gave it to him, but it’s okay, it’s JT,” Porzingis said with mock indignation that may also have been serious. “I’m the only player, maybe, in the NBA that has to get 12 or 13 rebounds to get a double-double. This is insane.”
Porzingis later added another little dig when praising Tatum, saying Tatum “can guard anybody and dish out 10 assists like this, and steal some rebounds from me.”
For what it’s worth, a rewatch of Tatum’s rebounds suggests that only one could have a case for Porzingis — Tatum’s ninth at the start of the second half. Porzingis contested Nikola Vucevic and forced a miss, then both he and Tatum appeared to tip it before Tatum controlled it. To these eyes, it looked like Tatum should have the rebound, but we promise to keep an eagle eye on Tatum’s boards for Porzingis going forward.
Porzingis finished with 22 points and — apparently — a wholly insufficient seven rebounds.
Jaylen Brown’s handle has grown enormously.
We aren’t exactly breaking news at this point here, but Brown’s handle has grown almost unrecognizably since his rookie season, and the growth is especially noticeable since the Warriors in 2022 and Heat in 2023 took advantage of his struggles in consecutive playoff runs.
With five minutes remaining in the first half on Saturday, Brown started pushing the ball up the floor. Bulls players pressured him from behind, and Brown simply slowed down for a second, collected himself, and exploded forward for a layup.
That type of composure simply never used to be there for Brown. The Bulls aren’t exactly the strongest defensive team in the league (their defensive rating, in fact, is 25th in the NBA), but Brown’s handle is a significant part of the reason he has improved so much as a passer and facilitator (it’s a lot easier to make great passes when you have great control of the ball), and his ability to get to the rim and score has improved enormously. That was particularly on display in the first half.
Brown finished with 19 points and eight assists.
The Celtics tried some zone (and were much better defensively).
For all of their flaws, the Bulls proved Thursday that they can be a tough offensive team, but the Celtics were significantly better on the defensive end on Saturday, showing that — predictably — a championship-caliber team can and will improve greatly against a lottery-bound squad when given a mini-playoff series to do so.
The Celtics held Zach LaVine to just 14 points on 4-for-11 shooting after he demolished them at TD Garden, and Nikola Vucevic needed 19 shots to score 19 points.
The Celtics were most notably better in two areas: Guarding ball-handlers at the point of attack, and in a little 2-3 zone that they broke out a few times to great effect. A confused Bulls offense struggled to get shots against the highly active and fluid zone, and the Celtics held them to just 37.8 percent shooting overall.
The Celtics have slipped a bit from 3.
After shooting 15-for-45 (33.3 percent) from three on Saturday, the Celtics are now 34.4 percent from three in their last nine games.
That 1) is admittedly a pretty arbitrary number (but not entirely statistically insignificant), 2) is just barely noticeable enough to warrant attention, and not notable enough to be a true worry but also 3) a small amount of sand in their otherwise well-lubricated offensive gears.
Against a team like Chicago, which surrendered a season-high 60 points in the paint to the Celtics, the small amount of slippage didn’t amount to much. But on a high-volume 3-point shooting team like the Celtics, ticking a few percentages down could actually matter a bit in the final score against a team with better interior defense.
Still, the expectation here is very strongly that the Celtics will start trending upwards soon, and maybe in a big way.
The Celtics are great at getting back on track.
The Celtics have not lost consecutive games yet this season and have won by double-digits in five of their six bounce backs.
Porzingis said the Celtics’ egos get “ignited” when they lose.
“Even last season, we had a moment,” Porzingis began intriguingly before trailing off. “Ah, we don’t need to go into that. But we have ups and downs throughout the season, and there’s no need to overreact, I feel like.
“But tonight was a good game to bounce back.”
A busy Christmas week
The Celtics will now travel to Orlando for Monday’s contest against the Magic before heading home to take on the 76ers at TD Garden on Christmas Day. They will take on the Pacers in back-to-back games at TD Garden on Friday and Sunday.
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