Jaylen or Tatum?

If the Celtics could only keep one of them, who would you prefer that they keep?

  • Jaylen Brown

  • Jayson Tatum


Results are only viewable after voting.

Marbleheader

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Tangentially related to the Kawhi thread, assuming that the Celtics had to deal one of them for a superstar who is the guy you'd want them to keep?
 

Cellar-Door

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Tatum for me.
Brown is the better athlete and has more chance of becoming someone capable of being an elite defender.
Tatum has much higher offensive upside and fits with just about any lineup. I believe in his shot more, so you're looking at a much higher floor within a team that is going to have 2-3 other scorers
 

BigSoxFan

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For me it’s Tatum and it really isn’t close. He projects to be an alpha scorer on a top team, is younger, and an extra year of control.

With that said, I will say that the Spurs fans I know have absolutely no idea how good Jaylen has already become and what his ceiling looks like. Similar to Tatum, there aren’t a whole lot of players I would trade Brown for, once you factor in the contract, outside of the obvious stars.
 

mauf

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Easiest poll ever. I love Jaylen, but JT is already the better player of the two, and he’s a year and a half younger and a year further away from free agency.
 

ifmanis5

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Tatum.
Easiest poll ever. I love Jaylen, but JT is already the better player of the two, and he’s a year and a half younger and a year further away from free agency.
Exactly.

Keeping both under cost control will allow Danny to bring in some big tickets down the road if he can keep Stevens as coach as well.
 

jmm57

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The poll asked who I prefer, and it’s Brown. He’s just my favorite player on the team and I want him on my TV for the foreseeable future.

If the poll asked who they should keep, it’s probably Tatum.
 

Marbleheader

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I like Jaylen, but unlike some people in the other thread there are quite a few star players I would send a package including Jaylen to get. The list of guys I'd send Tatum out for is much smaller. I might have to sit down and write those lists up.
 

Captaincoop

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Tatum, easy call.

After Kyrie went down, Tatum averaged 17/6/3. At age 20.

If anything, I think we're underestimating how incredible this start has been to his career. To trade Jayson Tatum, I would need to feel like the Celtics immediately become the overwhelming favorites to win a title with whatever they get back. Basically, he should be untouchable.
 

lovegtm

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I LOVE Jaylen, but I believe in Tatum's handle and ability to be a #1 offensive option a bit more. I also think that if he adds the threat of a 3-pointer off PnRs he becomes almost unguardable, given his ability to get to the rim.
 

jasail

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Like most in the thread, I went with Tatum. He just has too much going on for him. He has Top 10 player potential. Brown is awesome too, but he just doesn't have the offensive potential that Tatum does and his edge on defense doesn't close the gap. TBH, I'd like to keep them both.
 

Ale Xander

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Brown fits with Gordon and Kyrie better and you can get more for Tatum and I don't like Duke.


First world problems though.
 

lovegtm

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Changing my vote to "how many picks do the Pelicans have to send along with AD?"
 

DJnVa

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I have no idea, but I do know that in this last 5 games, Brown has:

Game 1: scored a career high 32
Game 3: scored 21 points in first quarter
Game 4: scored 20 points in first playoff start
Game 5: scored 30 points in second playoff start
 

Philip Jeff Frye

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I have no idea, but I do know that in this last 5 games, Brown has:

Game 1: scored a career high 32
Game 3: scored 21 points in first quarter
Game 4: scored 20 points in first playoff start
Game 5: scored 30 points in second playoff start
And Tatum scored 4 in his second playoff game.

Its kind of meaningless but it's pretty surprising that the Celtics had an easy victory in a big playoff game where Tatum did so poorly.
 

Toe Nash

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Isn't the common wisdom that rookies suck, even when they go on to become stars? Brown was OK as a rookie but Tatum was an efficient NBA-caliber player from day one. There's very few players who put together the type of rookie year he had, especially rookies who were also under 21.
 

mauf

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Isn't the common wisdom that rookies suck, even when they go on to become stars? Brown was OK as a rookie but Tatum was an efficient NBA-caliber player from day one. There's very few players who put together the type of rookie year he had, especially rookies who were also under 21.
That is absolutely the common wisdom. If there’s any reason to be bearish on Tatum, it’s that he has been exceptionally polished for a rookie and therefore might improve much less in the next year or two than your typical kid who enters the NBA at age 19. Even those of us who are bullish on Tatum don’t expect him to make the kind of leap next year that Jaylen made this year.
 

tbrown_01923

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I expect him to be stronger and able to finish better because of it. That and respect might be enough to get him an extra 3-5 ppg given the current usage on the premise of finishing a couple more and a few FTs. Sure not as big as a leap from a fringe rotation to the one of the best scorers currently on team... BUT those 3-5 points and some more consistency through the dog days would be HUGE.
 

HomeRunBaker

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That is absolutely the common wisdom. If there’s any reason to be bearish on Tatum, it’s that he has been exceptionally polished for a rookie and therefore might improve much less in the next year or two than your typical kid who enters the NBA at age 19. Even those of us who are bullish on Tatum don’t expect him to make the kind of leap next year that Jaylen made this year.
I don't see why Tatum wouldn't make a similar leap and I'd be disappointed if he didn't. He has great improvement to do on his body which should result in added strength and a players second year following his first offseason is typically their most important sign of their long term growth. I'm looking for huge things from Tatum next year.....maybe not necessarily shown in raw numbers as his usage will be down with the return of Hayward. Or maybe it will.
 

mauf

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I expect him to be stronger and able to finish better because of it. That and respect might be enough to get him an extra 3-5 ppg given the current usage on the premise of finishing a couple more and a few FTs. Sure not as big as a leap from a fringe rotation to the one of the best scorers currently on team... BUT those 3-5 points and some more consistency through the dog days would be HUGE.
This is what I’m hoping for too, except I think the improvement is more likely to show itself in assists than points. A guy who’s as good off the dribble as Tatum should make his teammates better. That’s too much to expect from a 19-year old, even one as polished as Tatum, but if he’s going to get there eventually (and I’m bullish on that), we should see signs next year —he’ll never be Ben Simmons, but he shouldn’t be sitting at 1.9 assists per 36 minutes either.
 

Eddie Jurak

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This is what I’m hoping for too, except I think the improvement is more likely to show itself in assists than points. A guy who’s as good off the dribble as Tatum should make his teammates better. That’s too much to expect from a 19-year old, even one as polished as Tatum, but if he’s going to get there eventually (and I’m bullish on that), we should see signs next year —he’ll never be Ben Simmons, but he shouldn’t be sitting at 1.9 assists per 36 minutes either.
I think we’ve already been seeing signs. Not consistently, yet, but in his March hot streak he’s been flashing some play making skill pretty consistently. He’s had some pretty spectacular assists, and what’s more, he seems on occasion to have a sense of how to use his ballhandling to move defenders out of the way so as to create for teammates.

Next year, when he is sharing the floor with Hayward and Kyrie, I think we’ll see even more of it.
 

mauf

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I think we’ve already been seeing signs. Not consistently, yet, but in his March hot streak he’s been flashing some play making skill pretty consistently. He’s had some pretty spectacular assists, and what’s more, he seems on occasion to have a sense of how to use his ballhandling to move defenders out of the way so as to create for teammates.

Next year, when he is sharing the floor with Hayward and Kyrie, I think we’ll see even more of it.
Totally agree.

I should add that we’ll likely see an uptick in his scoring as well — Tatum is sometimes unselfish to a fault, which should solve itself as he gains confidence (and is encouraged by his teammates to take the fucking ball to the hole when the guy who’s guarding him can’t hold his jock — this is not exactly a hard message for a veteran to deliver).
 

DJnVa

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His assists/game per month: 1.7, 1.4, 1.2, 1.3, 1.6, 2.4, 2.3 (and 3.5 in first 2 postseason games)

That's a decent uptick. It'll come.
 

mauf

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Btw, I don’t want to give the wrong impression with my argument that Tatum isn’t likely to take a huge leap forward next season, like Brown did this season. Tatum will absolutely be better in his second season — he’s already a better player than Brown, and that gap is a lot more likely to grow than shrink.

If Tatum made as big a leap from year 1 to year 2 as Brown did, he’d be almost as good as Durant next year. That’s not realistic.
 

Toe Nash

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This is very unscientific, and I didn't watch as many games last year as I did this year, but it seems like a lot of Jaylen's improvement this year came on the mental side (decision-making, rotations, etc), and he got better at shooting 3s. JB was already plenty athletic.

Tatum seems to already be doing a lot of the "basketball IQ" things right so maybe he has less room to grow there, and I'm not sure how much better his shooting could really get either (using the bb-ref play finder, he had the 4th-best 3p% ever among rookies with at least 200 attempts, and 8th best with at least 100 attempts). But obviously he has more potential to fill out and be more physical.

So I think they will grow in different ways. Whether the overall "leap" for Tatum is as big as Brown's, I'm not sure. It will be fun to find out.
 

BigSoxFan

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This is very unscientific, and I didn't watch as many games last year as I did this year, but it seems like a lot of Jaylen's improvement this year came on the mental side (decision-making, rotations, etc), and he got better at shooting 3s. JB was already plenty athletic.

Tatum seems to already be doing a lot of the "basketball IQ" things right so maybe he has less room to grow there, and I'm not sure how much better his shooting could really get either (using the bb-ref play finder, he had the 4th-best 3p% ever among rookies with at least 200 attempts, and 8th best with at least 100 attempts). But obviously he has more potential to fill out and be more physical.

So I think they will grow in different ways. Whether the overall "leap" for Tatum is as big as Brown's, I'm not sure. It will be fun to find out.
I think this is true. Tatum’s needed growth is more on the physical side whereas Brown’s needed growth is on the skill side. There will naturally be different rates of growth for each. Obviously, both guys need to grow on each front.

I’m sure the strength and conditioning guys will get Tatum on a plan for the summer. If he comes into camp with 10-15 more pounds of muscle, it’ll be game on.
 

Jed Zeppelin

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Tatum can add like 4ppg just by hanging on to the ball better during drives and learning to finish with his left hand.
 

Eddie Jurak

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Tatum seems to already be doing a lot of the "basketball IQ" things right so maybe he has less room to grow there
I see thins line of thinkng from time to time, and I think it is wrong, or at least overstated. I mean, obviously he has room to grow physically. But, the idea that he's at or near his peak in terms of learning and understanding how to play the game just strikes me as ludicrous. One big area of potential improvement was identified up thread by @maufman - playmaking.
 

mauf

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I see thins line of thinkng from time to time, and I think it is wrong, or at least overstated. I mean, obviously he has room to grow physically. But, the idea that he's at or near his peak in terms of learning and understanding how to play the game just strikes me as ludicrous. One big area of potential improvement was identified up thread by @maufman - playmaking.
Yes, but those improvements tend to be more gradual and modest than, say, learning your rotations so that you don’t fuck up and hand the other team an easy bucket 2-3 times per game. Tatum doesn’t make those dumb rookie mistakes, the elimination of which accounts for a big part of the typical jump from year 1 to year 2. He’s by no means a finished product in any aspect of his game; he just doesn’t have the low-hanging fruit to pick that Jaylen did.
 

Cesar Crespo

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It's like asking us to pick between Bird and McHale. The answer is obvious but I'd rather not pick.

I would take Tatum but I think people underestimate Jaylen's ceiling. Both of them could improve considerably by just working on their play making skills. They aren't perfect comparisons, but when Smart and Rozier came into the league, they weren't all that great of play makers either so maybe this is something the Celtics are good at teaching.
 

Deathofthebambino

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I didn't even know this thread existed until now, but my vote has been pretty clear all season, and I'm keeping Brown without thinking twice. Tatum has flaws on offfense that I think a lot of C's fans aren't noticing, and Brown is already an elite defender, on top of the leap he's made on the offensive end.
 

Ed Hillel

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Tatum was also probably a better defender this year.

Jaylen’s improvement has been about as good as we could have possibly hoped for, however. He’s turning into someone you actually want to throw a max at. My biggest fear was he’d be at that level where you’re wasting money on a max, but that would not seem to be the case. He’s a stud.
 

RedOctober3829

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Jaylen showed today that he has that alpha-dog mentality of "just give me the ball and let me go score". If he can improve even more on his shot-making and decision-making gets better the sky is the limit for him. I also think both could add a post up game. As for Tatum, as has been said he could put 10-15 lbs on and be more of a physical player.
 

Jed Zeppelin

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This must be what Raptors fans felt they had with Carter and McGrady together. To have two rookie scale stars to go with three other stars in the starting five is an unbelievable luxury. Crazy good lineup.
 

Deathofthebambino

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This must be what Raptors fans felt they had with Carter and McGrady together. To have two rookie scale stars to go with three other stars in the starting five is an unbelievable luxury. Crazy good lineup.
82-0 lineup.

If only the injury Gods don't fuck us again.
 

Blacken

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Tatum was also probably a better defender this year.

Jaylen’s improvement has been about as good as we could have possibly hoped for, however. He’s turning into someone you actually want to throw a max at. My biggest fear was he’d be at that level where you’re wasting money on a max, but that would not seem to be the case. He’s a stud.
Agreed. It's a question of derivative, to me - players improve at different rates. Tatum is a better player now and there's a good chance of him improving quicker relative to Brown. But there's also a good chance of it happening the other way around. This is too-close-to-call stuff when you're looking three or four years out, I think.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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One thing with Tatum and Brown - they are still figuring out the league and what they can do and what they can do. Tatum, in particular, I think gives the league too much credit. There are times when he should just go up with the ball and shoot over people but for now he's looking to create space.

So happy we get to watch them for the next couple of years.