There is a video of the team walking into the locker room after Bird took that shot and you see Bill Walton with his arms in the air just exclaiming, Larry Bird! Larry Bird!
Jayson Tatum's Rise to the Top: The Man is Non-stop
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That ten year old is wise beyond his years. No surprise that Tatum buoyed young Xavier during his cancer treatment.
Yeah this is a thing. From an article on Al:
“I think he’s seen the most,” Brogdon said. “But he’s also just sort of taken the throne on leading us and you know you have a special leader when guys like Jayson Tatum, a top-five player in the world, Jaylen Brown, another top player in the world, listen to him. Quiet, they listen to him. They want his feedback. They want his leadership. So Al’s been that special leader for us all season.”
https://www.masslive.com/celtics/2023/05/why-al-horford-stopped-celtics-practice-as-team-prepped-for-heat-series.html?outputType=amp
Also, there’s this, from an anonymous coach quoted in the Athletic:
“Jayson Tatum? ‘Humbly,’ he said, ‘I’m one of the best basketball players in the world.’ Well, (I think) you might be the best, kid. Your time is definitely coming.”
Great point. Also known as "the reason statistics is a valid discipline, and not just mumbo-jumbo".
It's also why I have a love-hate relationship with that XKCD comic about sports commentary (posted upthread, and, like, about every month or so on SoSH).
On the one hand, yeah, short-term narratives based on the results of a few games or even a single game are often nonsense.
On the other hand, using those "weighted random number generators" long enough, you can actually learn something useful about trends, habits and behaviors that give you a deeper understanding of the games you enjoy watching. i.e., statistics is a thing. It quenches our thirst for knowledge.
On the third hand, none of us watch sports for the numbers. Humans relate to stories, and we almost crave narratives. Understanding sports psychology, players' histories and storylines, team chemistry, and so on is part of what makes it all watchable for us - what has made it part of our shared cultural touchstones. They're not robots, and we come to care about some of them, the way we care about our friends. The sports being played are just a platform to tell human stories, to create a reality TV show with no script beyond the games and see what falls out.
On the fourth hand, and at an aggregate level, teams rise and fall, players' careers rise and fall, tactics evolve and then become commonplace, and in the long run, everyone trends towards .500. Just like how "in the long run, we are all dead". There's something of an existential uselessness that can pervade trying to pull together some long arc of storyline about sports - something that is, at some deeper level, just blips on a bell curve, very rarely punctuated by parades. Life is short, so do things that bring you joy, or wisdom, or whatever the fuck is the conclusion of your preferred philosophy, right? Don't you all have some business to build, some family to spend time with, some scientific discoveries to pursue?
And yet: legacy matters to us. Shared cultural connections matter, in a fragmented and hectic society where people move around all the time. We want to leave our mark on the world, or at the very least, see that the marks we want to have left on the world do get left, even if our own role in it is small-to-zero. We like Tatum, and we like Boston sports, and we want glory to go to both. We want them to be a part of the long-term story of basketball. Implicitly we kind of all buy into the idea that narratives can and should be shaped by little things like this, that they matter by the sheer force of simply becoming the narrative, fair or not. If it weren't for narratives, or for teams becoming the avatar of a city or region, sports would be just a calorie-burning pastime with some random outcomes attached, and nobody who isn't a participant would care.
And so I struggle with whether Randall Munroe has a point or not. Even with whether I want him to have a point or not. And it flows straight from narratives about Tatum, or Doc Rivers, or whoever is the sports "main character of the day".
The Mr. Hyde versoion of Tatum showed up last night, especially late.
Overall line: 30 points on 9-17 shooting (1 of 3 from three) along with 11-11 from the line, 7 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 block, 4 turnovers
At a glance it is a respectable line.
But here is his 4th quarter: in 8 minutes, he scored 6 points by going 6-6 at the line - but he was anable to even get a shot off from the field. Beyond that, he had one rebound. Just one. Finally, 3 turnovers.
And the performance was worse than the numbers would indicate. At one point, semi-late in the quarter, with the Celtics trailing by 5 but getting stops on D, they went through 2-3 failed offensive possessions where Tatum did not touch the ball. Following that, they did started getting it to Tatum - and he turned the ball over 3 straight times.
As good as he was during ther last five quarters of the Philly series, he was a not-ready-for-prime time abject disaster tonight. I don't think he wanted the ball and when he finally got it he turned it over repeatedly. Beyond that, he had games in Philly where the shooting wants there throughout but he contributed in other ways - rebounding, setting up teammates, blocked shots, etc. Last night he did basically none of that.
There is a Jekyll-and-Hyde aspect to Tatum that I don't get.
I mean, if he shows up and plays decently - not take the game over as in Philly game 6 - in the 4th quarter, the Celtics might have won this game. Instead he was alternately a nonpresence and a negative one.
Overall line: 30 points on 9-17 shooting (1 of 3 from three) along with 11-11 from the line, 7 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 block, 4 turnovers
At a glance it is a respectable line.
But here is his 4th quarter: in 8 minutes, he scored 6 points by going 6-6 at the line - but he was anable to even get a shot off from the field. Beyond that, he had one rebound. Just one. Finally, 3 turnovers.
And the performance was worse than the numbers would indicate. At one point, semi-late in the quarter, with the Celtics trailing by 5 but getting stops on D, they went through 2-3 failed offensive possessions where Tatum did not touch the ball. Following that, they did started getting it to Tatum - and he turned the ball over 3 straight times.
As good as he was during ther last five quarters of the Philly series, he was a not-ready-for-prime time abject disaster tonight. I don't think he wanted the ball and when he finally got it he turned it over repeatedly. Beyond that, he had games in Philly where the shooting wants there throughout but he contributed in other ways - rebounding, setting up teammates, blocked shots, etc. Last night he did basically none of that.
There is a Jekyll-and-Hyde aspect to Tatum that I don't get.
I mean, if he shows up and plays decently - not take the game over as in Philly game 6 - in the 4th quarter, the Celtics might have won this game. Instead he was alternately a nonpresence and a negative one.
"I don't think he wanted the ball" is an insane thing to say. I'm not sure why they weren't getting him involved but come on.
I think him sitting for the first 4 minutes and then not being the focal point of the offense in the 4th after getting shellacked in the 3rd quarter could be a message from Mazzulla, or just a confusing coaching decision. But imagining Tatum would not WANT the ball invalidates your whole point. Par for the course with your posts I suppose.
I look forward to bumping this thread when he wins the series for us again.
I think him sitting for the first 4 minutes and then not being the focal point of the offense in the 4th after getting shellacked in the 3rd quarter could be a message from Mazzulla, or just a confusing coaching decision. But imagining Tatum would not WANT the ball invalidates your whole point. Par for the course with your posts I suppose.
I look forward to bumping this thread when he wins the series for us again.
I still maintain it's an age/maturity thing. This is a bit crude, because I dont think the bbref gamescore metric is the greatest, but not sure what else to use for this exercise. For reference, they cite 40 as an outstanding performance, and 10 as an average performance. I used 20 as a divider line, because Tatum's score last night was 19.6...which I think speaks to your point, his overall stat line was fine but not what you need from your #1 in the playoffs. Anyway, here is what I found using 3 current superstars in the three seasons of playoff games, around Tatum's age, which culminates with a title (the below doesn't look at @bosockboy point about the floor, but now I need to get actual work done so I won't have time to get into that):
Lebron
2010 Playoffs, Age 25, 5/11 games (45%) below 20 gamescore
2011 Playoffs, Age 26, 9/21 games (43%) below 20 gamescore
2012 Playoffs, Age 27, 5/23 games (22%) below 20 gamescore - won the title
Curry
2013 Playoffs, Age 25, 8/12 games (66%) below 20 gamescore
2014 Playoffs, Age 26, 4/7 games (57%) below 20 gamescore
2015 Playoffs, Age 27, 8/21 games (38%) below 20 gamescore - won the title
Giannis
2019 Playoffs, Age 24, 7/15 games (47%) below 20 gamescore
2020 Playoffs, Age 25, 4/9 games (44%) below 20 gamescore
2021 Playoffs, Age 26, 7/21 games (33%) below 20 gamescore - won the title
Tatum
2021 Playoffs, Age 23, 2/5 games (40%) below 20 gamescore (if you combine with his 2020 playoff run when he was 8/17 below 20, 10/22 total is 45%)
2022 Playoffs, Age 24, 13/24 games (54%) below 20 gamescore
2023 Playoffs, Age 25, 5/14 (36%) below 20 gamescore
edit: forgot to add Butler as well, since that will be who Tatum is compared to next couple weeks
2015 Playoffs, Age 25, 8/12 games (66%) below 20 gamescore
2016 - no playoff data
2017 Playoffs, Age 27, 3/6 games (50%) below 20 gamescore
2018 Playoffs, Age 28, 4/5 games (80%) below 20 gamescsore
2019 Playoffs, Age 29, 7/12 games (58%) below 20 gamescore
2020 Playoffs, Age 30, 11/21 games (52%) below 20 gamescore (ill stop here since this was closest he's come to a title)
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That's instructive, but game score doesn't capture the extremes. In Philly game 6, Tatum's game score was 12.6. But he overcame a bad start to win that game with a clutch late-4th-quarter performace. In Miami game 1, his game score was 19.6. But in that game he followed up a decent first 3 quarters with a disastrous 4th in which he could not get a shot from the field, went long stretches without touching the ball, and turned it over 3 straight times when he finally did. It was like the bizarro Philly game 6.
Maybe you are still right and it is age/maturity. But it is the extremes that stand out to me.
I do think that other great players have extreme performances in the playoffs; we just don't notice as much, because we're not as locked in watching. LeBron's 4th Q last night was a great example, but Jokic had his rough moments too and was saved by Murray's ridiculous shot-making.
Teams really really try to make superstars uncomfortable in the postseason, and succeed more than you'd think.
With the Celtics for me, it's less that Tatum has the extremes, and more at how inconsistent the team as a whole is in execution.
Well said. I’d add that even in the case of positive extremes - like Tatum’s 4th Q in game 6 last week - overall a team isn’t going far if their superstar is putting up games in total at that level, even if they get away with it sometimes. by the way - there really wasn’t much of a method to my choosing the 20 game score barrier (outside of Tatum falling just short of it, with the team falling just short, in game 1), if someone has a better way of doing that type of comparison, by all means have at it. I’m a relative beginner at some of this analysis compared with many posters here