Having 6 of our 8-man playoff rotation being young enough that they're still on the upswing of their careers, getting better every year, is surely a help. Though Jaylen is approaching the point where that might not be true for much longer, and KP would have to stay on the court long enough to get better at things.
This is the truth but as an aside, the period we’ve long been awaiting is here for JB & JT. PRIMETIME
I attended that draft and the Tatum one and both guys looked so young (they obviously were!). Crazy to think how much both have accomplished since then.
Sort of true, but also it feels like this is the only Celtics team I've ever known, and that those two have been here forever.
My take was that their defense was better than the offense in the finals. I think every game they won Dallas was under 100 points. Truly impressive shut down of the the STARZ driven Mavs.
This. Even for the last couple of years before this one, they win when engaged on defense. And Dallas has no answer for their defense.
His game is unique. Obviously his athleticism is a big part of it, but he’s made his game more and more about a combination of power, and getting to his spots. That usually ages well, even as the athleticism fades.
with the defensive clinic he put on Luka, Brown's (28) past comps to Jimmy Butler (35) seem more apt.
I just noticed WBCD mentioned Butler already, so I agree with Wade
I just listened to this segment, he was "kind of reporting this" that all indications are Bezos is going to bid on the Cs. He and Klosterman were spit-balling on the WHY of him doing so, but in the end Simmons was speculating the Cs have 8 or 9 more years left on the TD Garden lease so Bezos could be eyeing the potential to make his mark with a new arena/entertainment outpost similar to what Ballmer is doing with the Intuit Dome, Dolan with the Sphere, etc.
This reminds that, after the loss to the Lakers in '87, Bob Ryan wrote that it was now unlikely that Bird, at 30, would win two consecutive titles in his career.
Defense does not matter with these rankings at all. The idea is Elite Offense is the most important skill and defense can always be turned on. Also if you are producing elite offensive skills you shouldn't be expected to expend energy on defense. When you point out that elite defense can negate elite offense while you can't always turn on defense, what everyone says is Boston was super lucky and if you really think about it they actually lost. When you stare at them, they then talk bout how awesome Derrick White and Jrue Holiday are but then say the Nuggets were a better starting 5. I mean can't you see the logic. Bontemps was just saying Embiid is a bettter playoff player than Tatum.
But even if defense is a total nonfactor, Doncic had a woeful shooting percentage from three and from the FT line, and wasn't efficient at all on offense. He scored a lot of points, but not nearly as many as an elite guy should have given the number of shot attempts he had.
Yeah, his offense was far from elite in the Finals. I don't think it's obvious he was better than Tatum and Brown, particularly when you factor in how often the latter two were able to get Dallas in rotation, to the point that Dallas resorted to gimmicky 1-man-zone type stuff.
This place is going to flip when Doncic wins MVP next year and his team flames out in the second round of the playoffs. Good news is that these individual awards mean jack.
Agreed. But it sure would be nice to see Tatum get that recognition. But to me, I just want the Celtics to win it all. That's the bottom line.
Luka and SGA have gotta be considered heavy favorites for MVP next year (is SGA 2nd? I can't read the link). Luka won't get it if the Mavs finish out of the top tier in the west, unless SGA and the Thunder really falter.
I guess it'll be amazing again to see a guy average like 28/9/7, being the best player on the best team in the NBA, and finish so far down in the MVP voting.
Tatum has never averaged even 5 assists in the regular season (let alone 7) but even if those are his stats (and he finishes with similar efficiency numbers as the last couple of years), it's gonna be really, really difficult. At a glance, here are who I assume the top 5 are, and their numbers last year:
Yeah I think that it would be nice too, but I think that JT is heading down the career path of Tim Duncan. Quietly effective, (hopefully) multiple titles, consistently underrated by basically everyone. To their credit, the Athletic ranked Duncan in the top-10 on their list, but pretty much everyone just glosses him over. I expect the same for Tatum in the end. Maybe he eventually wins an MVP or two like Duncan when they have no choice but to give them to him, but he seems destined to be underrated.
The only way JT has a shot of getting MVP is if teams have decided that doubling him isn't going to work given how good his teammates are so they play him more straight up.
As well they should. There really are players that are more valuable to their teams than Tatum is to Boston. Doesn’t mean they are better, or more well rounded, or play good defense, it just means that their team would suffer much much more without them.
It brings up philosophical questions about how to measure value in the NBA. Is a player A more valuable if he is the difference between winning 35 games and 50? Or is player B more valuable if he's the difference between winning 50 and winning 60 games? Or how about player C, being the difference between winning 20 games and winning 40 games? Is a player most valuable if they can increase the regular season win count by the most? Or does the player who can bring a team closest to a title the most valuable?
I think it is an interesting thought exercise. Let’s say JT takes an MJ sabbatical for a year or gets hurt, how many games is the 2024-2025 Celtics winning given that KP is also out for probably half or more of the season? Is this a 45 win team? 40? Looks like they went 7-1 without JT last year with only L being to Indy by 2 due to that BS Jaylen call replay.
The counterargument is that the hardest thing in the NBA is squeezing out that last 5-10% of team performance. Teams go deep into the tax to try to do that, make big risky moves at the margin to do it....and are rightly crucified when they don't do it (Denver letting KCP walk).
Yeah and I'm sure that he would too. It's insulting not to be acknowledged fully for what you do, especially when you're still young. But winning titles and being a dominant player for a long period of time is a pretty sweet career, even without a couple of MVPs. I doubt that Tim would trade his resume with anyone.
Brown winning the 2 playoff mvps during that title run kind of killed that narrative nationally. If enough of the general public can't even agree that Tatum is the clear best player on the team then he can't possibly get mvp buzz.
Should it have, though? It's not like anyone seriously doubts whether Tatum is the best player on the Celtics. Just ask all the coaches who keep anchoring their game planning around him.
Great, those coaches aren't the ones that are writing about preseason mvp buzz. I'm not sure what you've been reading for the last few months if you don't think anyone doubts that Tatum is the best player on the team, "should it have" is irrelevant.
One of the nice things about having your two best players be similar in size and play style is that it's often quite easy to see who opposing teams are more scared of. It's a relatively useless luxury, but it does render these sorts of rankings pretty moot.
Can you find me one person with a platform opining that Tatum isn't the best player on the Celtics? Besides trolls like Nick Wright, I mean. A few minutes of googling brought me to Shannon Sharpe "just asking questions", but otherwise I came up empty. Meanwhile you've got things like Bill Simmons asking Reddit this.
Yeah, fair point. Though I think we both come to the same conclusion I did in my post above.
