Tatum's 3P at ~4:15 put them up 84-83. The overall energy of that quarter felt like the whole season was slipping away, the crowd was going nuts - and that at least made it seem like we weren't dead yet.
Tatum's back to back 3P at ~3:35 put them 87-83 and I started to think "Maybe we could actually win?"
There was then the PHI FT, and Smart had a big bucket to go up 89-84.
Tatum's next 3P, was actually pretty big as well. That put them up 92-84 with under 2 minutes to play. The announcers even commented that it seemed like Philly stopped playing at that point. The 4th one, I think was almost garbage time level - although in a playoff game hard to call anything really "garbage time".
That was an absolute incredible sequence for Tatum, and as others pointed out, pretty much reversed an entire offseason of ridicule in a few short minutes. If the Celtics had lost, Tatum would have been labelled as a playoff choker (not saying that's correct - but let's face it, being named All NBA and putting up a gooseegg in the first half of a key playoff game is not a good look). I hope they really bring it on Sunday.
It just shows you the oddness of trying to ascribe
narratives to this stuff. If Tatum had made 3 prior 3Ps at some point earlier in the game, and missed these first 3 in this sequence, then Maxey's 3 would have just cut it to 83-90, the Celtics would still be up 7, then 6, then 8. Not a blowout but still fairly comfortable for the closing minutes of a playoff game. Maybe the Sixers stop playing at that point regardless, but at that point Tatum would've still had a poor shooting game, and yet the Cs would be in position to win by double-digits-or-so in a game that had been "close at times, but which they had led mostly wire-to-wire". The narrative would be about the Celtics' first-half defense, Smart playing out of his mind, Brogdon shooting the lights out, and Tatum doing everything he could even on "an off night", as the team grinded out the minutes in the second half. If the Sixers had instead had a late run in those final few minutes and won the game and series, people might have said Tatum "Came up small", but nobody would've pointed to his final shooting line as being embarrassing for a player of his stature.
So, then, what's the difference between making a few early and missing late, vs making a few late and missing early? You can't just "Try harder" and miraculously make more of your shots. It's not like we can say he wasn't giving enough effort early last night, and then turned it on late. God knows he was defending and communicating and running and passing his ass off out there. No magic switch was flipped on his shots, they "just weren't going in", up until they did. There's like some fundamental ignorance with respect to statistics and probability and how randomness works that's at play here, and I think it kinda stinks.
edit: to be clear, I don't think shooting is
entirely random. We know from analytics that certain types of shots go in at better rates than others, and part of offense is creating those higher-percentage opportunities. Most obviously, how open the shot is. But to my eyes, most of Tatum's shots were very good ones last night. Most notably that shot to end the 3rd quarter, wide open uncovered from the corner - he probably makes that 70%+ of the time. He had one or two missed layups. So you can do some things to affect your shooting percentage, such as catch-and-shoot in rhythm, or how open the shot is, or getting to "your spots" where practice has given you good touch from that particular range and angle. But once you adjust for those things, you've kinda done all you can - controlling for that, it IS kinda random rolls of the dice. And so drawing conclusions and painting narratives based on which rolls came up good and which didn't - rather than discussions on how you could've weighted your dice better (shot quality, passing, action to free things up, turnovers, players getting gassed) - just seems stupid to me. I guess that's why I post and read about basketball here, and not on Twitter.
