Jayson Tatum has never been better than he has been this season, and the Celtics will need it to repeat

Tatum became a better and more willing passer in his ongoing evolution into as complete an all-around player as there is in the entire league.

Despite some bumps in the road, Jayson Tatum says this season has been "a lot of fun" for he and his Celtics teammates as they look to defend their NBA title. Brett Phelps for The Boston Globe

By Chad Finn, The Boston Globe

April 18, 2025

4 minutes to read

More with the Celtics

Somewhere not too far down the long checklist of satisfactions that came with the Celtics’ championship last summer was the death of a narrative so tired that it was almost as annoying as the word “narrative.”

The Celtics’ 16-3 stampede through the playoffs, culminating with a five-game NBA Finals victory over the Mavericks and the franchise’s 18th banner, silenced anyone and everyone who howled through the years that Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown were too redundant in skill to ever win a title together.

(It’s weird, you don’t hear anyone suggesting Brown should be traded for Bradley Beal anymore, do you?)

That Tatum-Brown narra . . . you know, let’s call it a “talking point” . . . has been crushed beneath the fat wheels of a duck boat. In their seventh season as teammates last season, they mastered how to best thrive together and individually, when to look for their own shot, and when to cede the parquet stage to the other.

Tatum became a better and more willing passer in his ongoing evolution into as complete an all-around player as there is in the entire league. Brown directed his unwavering confidence toward become a master of hitting crucial shots in a game’s tensest moments — including an impossible-looking 3-pointer to send Game 1 of the conference finals into overtime, and a crucial jumper with a minute left in Game 3 of the Finals after the Mavericks had whittled a 21-point Celtics lead to 2.

Brown won the Eastern Conference finals and NBA Finals Most Valuable Player awards along the way, but the latter could easily have gone to Tatum, who had 31 points, 8 rebounds, and 11 assists in the clincher. Either way, the individual accolade was not what mattered most to them after so many close-but-no-cigar deep playoff runs during their time together.

Their growth was not linear, because it rarely is for any player. But to their endless credit, Tatum and Brown continued to work relentlessly, didn’t skip steps, allowed themselves to be coached, and fully trusted their teammates.

(Of course, it’s easy to trust the likes of Derrick White and Jrue Holiday, who are malleable and selfless and damn good in their own right. Trusting, say, Marcus Smart came with its peaks and valleys, sometimes from possession to possession.)

Tatum and Brown and the Celtics organization as a whole did a remarkable job of navigating the regular season, winning 61 games and securing the East’s second seed while making sure their older or more injury-prone players got necessary downtime.

But that was the warm-up act. The real season, and the postseason quest to become the first team to defend a title since the Warriors in 2018, begins Sunday against the sturdy Orlando Magic. The Celtics’ journey will be different this year, because it’s different every year, and this time around it appears to be more fraught with legitimate challengers.

The Celtics’ roster is much the same, with noticeable improvements and perhaps some slight regressions. But some circumstances have changed, and it’s going to be fascinating in particular to see what the continued evolution of Tatum and Brown looks like during the playoffs, individually and within the concept of the team.

Because as well-rounded and complete as the Celtics’ roster is, this feels like Tatum’s time to unleash his full superstar repertoire on the rest of the league.

I’m not talking about him doing this in a selfish way, falling back into his Kobe, iso-ball habits at the worst time. I’m simply talking about him playing the way he has all season, whether scoring (26.8 points per game), rebounding (8.7, just short of his career high), defensively (he can and will guard all five positions), and especially passing (a career-best 6.0 assists).

Tatum has never been better — never more complete — than he has been this season. If he plays that way consistently in the postseason, he will get his due as the league’s most complete superstar.

It’s natural for Tatum to elevate his game just a little more. It’s probably going to be necessary, too, because his longtime running mate may be compromised.

Brown delivered another All-Star season, averaging 22.2 points, 5.8 rebounds, and a career-best 4.5 assists, but he enters the playoffs a bit of a question mark after requiring pain management injections for his right knee.

In recent weeks, Brown has lacked explosiveness, his contributions often dependent upon whether his shot is falling. He has said he has watched video of the mostly earth-bound Paul Pierce to help him add a few old-man-game tricks to his bag, which is a wise thing to do, but it remains to be seen whether Brown can curb his impulses to try to Curly Neal his way through traffic and play a more patient game if his elite athleticism isn’t totally accessible. He may need to recede, ever so slightly, from the offensive spotlight if the Celtics are to be at their best.

With the curtain about to rise on the playoffs, I will reiterate what I wrote at the start of the season (when, for the record, I picked the Celtics to go 61-21): I believe they will repeat as champions. But the path is going to be rockier.

And if they are to raise a 19th banner at the end of this journey, a chief reason will be because Tatum is even better than he was a year ago. Here’s hoping Brown, should his knee remain an aggravation, does not lapse in adapting to that.