Jayson Tatum's Rise to the Top
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This feels like a just-so story to me. One could just as easily offer the pessimistic explanation - when defenses take the drivew away Tatum resorts to below average shots.
From the eye test, he seems most dangerous when he has the ball behind the arc and hasn't started his dribble. When defenders play him to drive, he can just shoot over them without having to gather first. If they are more agreessive he can back them off with a jab step or just put the ball on the floor and drive by.
Lol Giannis. LeBron is freaking incredible, as well. Also meant to put this in the general Celtics thread, oh well.
Haha Giannis literally makes that chart three times the size it would need to be otherwise.
he heard all the bickering about his off the dribble threes and decided to hit four of five tonight
Wasn't a great Tatum offensive performance yesterday vs. ORL. He wasn't getting calls on drives to the hoop early, and so started setting for a lot of mid-range fadeaways, which he missed... all of, unless I'm forgetting something. He did redeem himself a bit from 3-point land somewhat (4-6), but spent a lot of time pounding the ball on ISO sets that came up empty. It felt the team was more decisive on offense when he was on the bench and things were running through Jaylen and the bench players. It's just one game, so whatever... but you'd like to see him switch tactics earlier and either (a) recommit to getting to the hoop, or (b) just defer more to one of the other awesome players on this team who were having an easier time getting their shot. it drove me a bit crazy when he was still hoisting 15 foot fades off one foot heading into the 4th Q.
I'm ok with him taking those mid-range fadeaways over smaller defenders (even when he's missed a couple), he's been hitting those regularly all year. A lot of discussion over the last few days regarding how his off the dribble contested 3's can open up his drives, the threat of those tough looking fadeaways does even more for his game. Even if he hasn't truly unlocked it yet, a good pump fake will soon be all he needs in the post to get an easy trip to the line.
I don't see how Tatum's 3 point selection can be defended at this point. He honestly would be better just spotting up if he's going to waste possessions like this.
If his ankle is hurt, or it's tiring to drive....I get it! Just stop being the primary initiator on a team that has a few others, if you're going to just lazily jack it.
If his ankle is hurt, or it's tiring to drive....I get it! Just stop being the primary initiator on a team that has a few others, if you're going to just lazily jack it.
100%.
Two pieces of criticism for JT
1. Volume & situational use of ISO/Step-Back/OTD 3s
2. Take a seat if injured in a regular season game
Tatum can be a TOP3 player if he adjusts his shot selection/approach. That's pretty high praise for those that get upset with any kind of Tatum critique
Agree, and I've tried to be clear that my criticism is based on how good his driving and posting and playmaking are getting.
The Celtics would bend defenses much more with Tatum driving, posting, playmaking, and being selective on 3s, while involving All-Star-level teammates more.
The downside is it would affect Tatum's PPG
Ha. As a playmaker, he'd probably need to sacrifice a few more shots (POINTZ!) for the greater good.
Call me crazy, but love me those catch-and-shoot 3s from the TOP8
He'll get there, Tatum always does.
100%.
I am very sympathetic to injuries. IMO, I would essentially be putting these guys in bubble wrap.
But, if Tatum knows he is hurt and it’s not allowing him to be able to “explode” to the basket or get around people, he has to make himself a decoy. What he did last night was the complete opposite. He was actively calling for the ball in big situations.
That’s on both CJM (for not forcing an adjustment away from Tatum) and Tatum
It's a pretty big contrast to watch Jaylen out there, making plays (even deep in the shot clock) and not doing the "depressed porn addict" shot selection routine. Hopefully Tatum can come back healthy and re-focus his offensive game, because he's got competition now for "best All-NBA Jay".
I wonder how much of Tatum's struggles are just a result of learning to play with new teammates during crunch time.
Not much? Aside from the GS game, he's generally made better, more purposeful decisions in crunch time than in the rest of the game.
I think it's simpler; he thinks his step-back 3 should fall, it's not, and that's tilting him and making him force it to try and get it to work again.
I’m super encouraged by how Jaylen is playing, but maybe pump the breaks on the best Jay stuff lol. We’ve seen years of one playing at first team level, Jaylen is having a great few weeks. This is his first efficient stretch of the season, I believe.
Unless we think Tatum is regressing at 25, based on a month of play, it seems kind of silly to me. I’m just happy that Jaylen is playing in a way that holds up in the playoffs.
Unless we think Tatum is regressing at 25, based on a month of play, it seems kind of silly to me. I’m just happy that Jaylen is playing in a way that holds up in the playoffs.
Tatum has a better track record and is a better player and a better bet to be a better player.
But like just a month or so ago, people were criticizing the C's staff for even letting Jaylen run offense, calling it a failed experiment. Think he deserves some love for the improvement, and it changes the team's ceiling materially.
(I would feel differently if it were just a hot stretch from 3 or midrange, but the initiation and playmaking are what have really taken a leap.)
Oh yeah I love how he’s playing. Love love love. But come playoff time, you need a player who can outplay other top 5ish players. Tatum the only player on this team capable of that.
I just think always connecting them is pointless. Why can’t it just be “Jaylen is playing amazing basketball, helps our odds of winning a title” lol.
Scal was saying last night he expects Jayson to insist on playing the LA games.
I thought that was nuts (or would be). I hope they put him on ice for a week to 10 days. Let the swelling go down, but also don't risk further tendon damage. Let him hit the weight room for a bit, without worrying about recovery for an upcoming game. Let him rest everything else that's a little banged up but wasn't keeping him out. So what if it's a Christmas game on national TV? We got enough presents for the Lakers even without him. And we don't need him for Detroit next Thurs either. Let him return at home vs Toronto next Friday.
I thought that was nuts (or would be). I hope they put him on ice for a week to 10 days. Let the swelling go down, but also don't risk further tendon damage. Let him hit the weight room for a bit, without worrying about recovery for an upcoming game. Let him rest everything else that's a little banged up but wasn't keeping him out. So what if it's a Christmas game on national TV? We got enough presents for the Lakers even without him. And we don't need him for Detroit next Thurs either. Let him return at home vs Toronto next Friday.
It's hard to find a better top 8 in the NBA.
Jrue
Brown
White
Tatum
Porzingis
Hauser
Horford
Pritchard
I'd love an upgrade over Pritchard, but still...pretty awesome group.
This HAS to be the mindset.
We know the Jays are tough. We’ve seen them play through injury. There is 0 reason for them to be out there if they have nagging injuries. No stretch of 5-10 regular season games are worth it
Boston beat Philly by 10 without JB, and blew out the Kings in Sacto without JT. They are 5-2 without KP starting, 1-1 without Jrue,
Boston has lost a grand total of one game with the JB, JT, KP, Jrue, White starting lineup, by three points in Philly.
If healthy. It’s going to be difficult for any team to beat the Cs four times out of seven. No one should see the court unless fully healthy.
Boston has lost a grand total of one game with the JB, JT, KP, Jrue, White starting lineup, by three points in Philly.
If healthy. It’s going to be difficult for any team to beat the Cs four times out of seven. No one should see the court unless fully healthy.
Yup. They should also be getting rest even if they’re not injured. If down 2 starters, then you’d need to push it a bit but on days when 1 guy is out, they’re perfectly fine.
John Karalis on Tatum's Pull-Up 3s this year + an article from last year.
Tatum takes almost six Pull-Up 3s per game and he’s hitting about 29% of them, a ridiculously bad percentage made worse by the volume at which he takes them. And it’s nothing new. He took about five of them last year and shot 29%. He shot 33.4% the year before on five attempts, which is better but not great.
We have to go back to the 2020-21 season to start finding any real success, when Tatum shot 36.3% on 5.4 attempts per game. He shot 40.7% on 5.9 attempts in ‘19-20, his one and only good season shooting pull-up 3-pointers.
The sample size is big enough where it’s pretty clear that Tatum should stop taking them so often. He takes about as many as Steph Curry and he shoots 9% less. He’s the worst in the league of the high-volume pull-up 3-point shooters (five or more).
I know he’s going to have to shoot it sometimes because they have to respect that he’ll take it, but how about maybe keeping it to two per game and spend those other three or four times doing something more productive?
From last season:
https://www.bostonsportsjournal.com/2023/03/20/karalis-the-numbers-are-clear---isolation-continues-to-be-the-worst-offense-for-jayson-tatum-and-the-celtics
“I thought we’d want no better shot than Jayson Tatum shooting an off-the-dribble wide open 3. I’ll take that a hundred times a game,” Joe Mazzulla said of Boston’s penultimate shot against the Jazz. “Jayson Tatum shooting and off the dribble 3, uncontested, is a great shot.”
Except that it’s not, and he hasn’t been for a while.
Tatum is shooting 30.8% on pull up 3-pointers since the All-Star break, and 29.1% this season. He shot 33.4% last season. The best of the best last year, like Klay Thompson, are in the mid-40% range. The good pull-up shooters are all around 40%. In the 20-21 season, Tatum shot 36%, and the year before that, 2019-20, was the last time he was actually good at that shot.
He’s still taking nearly five of them per game, though, which hasn’t really changed over the years.
Tatum does have to take some of those to keep the defense honest. Abandoning those completely becomes counterproductive, but Tatum should be a bit more judicious with those shots.
Instead, Tatum should focus more on working off the ball to get his shots. He’s having a rough shooting year, hitting just 34.5% from deep (about 1.5% below league average), but he’s shooting 39.4% on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers.
He’s taking 9.4 3-pointers per game, a majority of those being pull-ups. If he were to focus on flipping just two of those shots from off-the-dribble to catch-and-shoot, at his current percentages on each shot, he’d be shooting 35.9% overall from 3.
So just by shooting the shot he’s better at shooting, he’d raise his percentage in an off year to the league average. It’s what he was doing back in November when Boston’s offense was off the charts. He shot 5.2 catch-and-shoot (at 42.3%) and 4.5 off-the-dribble (at 25.4%).
One thing that stood out against Utah, and it was highlighted a lot on the broadcast, is how great Tatum is when he catches it on the move.
The numbers are pretty stark: When Tatum has the ball less than two seconds, which would be a catch-and-shoot or a quick drive off the catch, he’s shooting 67%.4 on 2-pointers and 39.7% on 3-pointers. When he holds it between two and six seconds, he’s at 54.7%/29.9%. At six-plus seconds, he’s down to 42.2%/29.1%
The longer he holds it, the less likely he is to make a shot.
Per NBA tracking data, Tatum isolates 4.8 times per game, ninth-most in the NBA. His score frequency is 40.9%, which puts him in the 53rd percentile.
I’ll put it this way: When Marcus Smart isolates, the online discourse devolves into the most toxic, panicky, reactionary stuff you’ll ever see, and he also scores 40.9% of the time he does it.
Oh, and side note: Jaylen Brown is at a 43% finishing rate, which will help me finish my point later.
What’s worse about Tatum’s numbers is they're up from the 39.6% scoring frequency from last season, and that was up from 34.7% the previous season.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat myself now: Just because Tatum can catch the ball, drive, and score on people very effectively, it does not make him an isolation player. He is, has been, and will be, a bad isolation player. He will score sometimes (40.9% of the time, in fact), but that doesn’t make him good at it.
The numbers are pretty clear. Tatum starting off the ball and then catching it from someone else can lead to some great things. Tatum holding the ball, dribbling a bunch, and trying to go 1-on-1 or launch a 3-pointer off the dribble is not good offense.
In fact, as the Smart and Brown numbers show, it’s not good offense when anyone does it.
Mazzulla is a believer in the numbers, and the numbers are pretty clear once again. Tatum is at his best, as are the Celtics, when the ball is moving and they are passing more while dribbling less. Tatum and Brown are incredibly talented players who can destroy defenses compromised by ball and player movement. When they go 1-on-1, they will fail more than they succeed.
There are 10 games left for them to be reminded of this message. It’s time for Tatum to accept where he’s at his best and do that more often.
Tatum takes almost six Pull-Up 3s per game and he’s hitting about 29% of them, a ridiculously bad percentage made worse by the volume at which he takes them. And it’s nothing new. He took about five of them last year and shot 29%. He shot 33.4% the year before on five attempts, which is better but not great.
We have to go back to the 2020-21 season to start finding any real success, when Tatum shot 36.3% on 5.4 attempts per game. He shot 40.7% on 5.9 attempts in ‘19-20, his one and only good season shooting pull-up 3-pointers.
The sample size is big enough where it’s pretty clear that Tatum should stop taking them so often. He takes about as many as Steph Curry and he shoots 9% less. He’s the worst in the league of the high-volume pull-up 3-point shooters (five or more).
I know he’s going to have to shoot it sometimes because they have to respect that he’ll take it, but how about maybe keeping it to two per game and spend those other three or four times doing something more productive?
From last season:
https://www.bostonsportsjournal.com/2023/03/20/karalis-the-numbers-are-clear---isolation-continues-to-be-the-worst-offense-for-jayson-tatum-and-the-celtics
“I thought we’d want no better shot than Jayson Tatum shooting an off-the-dribble wide open 3. I’ll take that a hundred times a game,” Joe Mazzulla said of Boston’s penultimate shot against the Jazz. “Jayson Tatum shooting and off the dribble 3, uncontested, is a great shot.”
Except that it’s not, and he hasn’t been for a while.
Tatum is shooting 30.8% on pull up 3-pointers since the All-Star break, and 29.1% this season. He shot 33.4% last season. The best of the best last year, like Klay Thompson, are in the mid-40% range. The good pull-up shooters are all around 40%. In the 20-21 season, Tatum shot 36%, and the year before that, 2019-20, was the last time he was actually good at that shot.
He’s still taking nearly five of them per game, though, which hasn’t really changed over the years.
Tatum does have to take some of those to keep the defense honest. Abandoning those completely becomes counterproductive, but Tatum should be a bit more judicious with those shots.
Instead, Tatum should focus more on working off the ball to get his shots. He’s having a rough shooting year, hitting just 34.5% from deep (about 1.5% below league average), but he’s shooting 39.4% on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers.
He’s taking 9.4 3-pointers per game, a majority of those being pull-ups. If he were to focus on flipping just two of those shots from off-the-dribble to catch-and-shoot, at his current percentages on each shot, he’d be shooting 35.9% overall from 3.
So just by shooting the shot he’s better at shooting, he’d raise his percentage in an off year to the league average. It’s what he was doing back in November when Boston’s offense was off the charts. He shot 5.2 catch-and-shoot (at 42.3%) and 4.5 off-the-dribble (at 25.4%).
One thing that stood out against Utah, and it was highlighted a lot on the broadcast, is how great Tatum is when he catches it on the move.
The numbers are pretty stark: When Tatum has the ball less than two seconds, which would be a catch-and-shoot or a quick drive off the catch, he’s shooting 67%.4 on 2-pointers and 39.7% on 3-pointers. When he holds it between two and six seconds, he’s at 54.7%/29.9%. At six-plus seconds, he’s down to 42.2%/29.1%
The longer he holds it, the less likely he is to make a shot.
Per NBA tracking data, Tatum isolates 4.8 times per game, ninth-most in the NBA. His score frequency is 40.9%, which puts him in the 53rd percentile.
I’ll put it this way: When Marcus Smart isolates, the online discourse devolves into the most toxic, panicky, reactionary stuff you’ll ever see, and he also scores 40.9% of the time he does it.
Oh, and side note: Jaylen Brown is at a 43% finishing rate, which will help me finish my point later.
What’s worse about Tatum’s numbers is they're up from the 39.6% scoring frequency from last season, and that was up from 34.7% the previous season.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat myself now: Just because Tatum can catch the ball, drive, and score on people very effectively, it does not make him an isolation player. He is, has been, and will be, a bad isolation player. He will score sometimes (40.9% of the time, in fact), but that doesn’t make him good at it.
The numbers are pretty clear. Tatum starting off the ball and then catching it from someone else can lead to some great things. Tatum holding the ball, dribbling a bunch, and trying to go 1-on-1 or launch a 3-pointer off the dribble is not good offense.
In fact, as the Smart and Brown numbers show, it’s not good offense when anyone does it.
Mazzulla is a believer in the numbers, and the numbers are pretty clear once again. Tatum is at his best, as are the Celtics, when the ball is moving and they are passing more while dribbling less. Tatum and Brown are incredibly talented players who can destroy defenses compromised by ball and player movement. When they go 1-on-1, they will fail more than they succeed.
There are 10 games left for them to be reminded of this message. It’s time for Tatum to accept where he’s at his best and do that more often.
I would say that Tatum's iso 3 stubbornness is getting Westbrookian, but honestly Russ has more self-awareness these days.
What pisses me off the most is that he does it a lot with KP on the floor. If you're too tired to work for a real shot, you can always just dump it to literally the best post scorer in the NBA, who can always generate a high percentage iso shot of his own.
What pisses me off the most is that he does it a lot with KP on the floor. If you're too tired to work for a real shot, you can always just dump it to literally the best post scorer in the NBA, who can always generate a high percentage iso shot of his own.
Agreed.
Honestly think NBA players care more about their stats than they (and we) care to admit.
Not wanting to take a TO (which he wouldn't have), at the end of the Laker game, is all you need to see for proof of that.
Yes, Tatum desperately wants to win but he also wants to be in the MVP running. The good thing is Jaylen & the rest aren't playing that way.
Love the point about Porzingis in the post at the end of a shot clock or quarter or game. It's a really, really good option, and I have no idea why those scenarios always have to be Tatum going iso and taking a step back three pointer. Just have Tatum make the entry pass and reset so his guy can't help on Porzingis. Spread the floor with the other guys to discourage help there, and Porzingis is going to get what probably is greater than a 50% probability of scoring outcome. I get not running that every time down the floor over the course of a game, but in these crunch time situations....this has to at least be one of their go-to sets. But nope. It's Tatum iso.
I believe KP in the post is yielding 1.44 pts/100, number one in the NBA.
AND as you noted if they spread the floor, & KP kicks, it would set up for a Catch & Shoot 3, which the C's, as a team, are hitting at a 40% rate.
The Pull-Up ISO 3s have hit a Shakespearean level with JT
Karalis talked about this. Guys want to win but they want to win their way. One of the reasons young teams have issues winning it all.
It's also a byproduct of the mindset that gets someone like JT where he is. JT thinks he's the best player in the world and he should be the one to win the game.
At least he didn't take a 3P last night. Baby steps.
Or they don't see another way. Tatum is one of the top players in the NBA, but he's not Lebron or Kobe or Curry or Jordan or whomever. He's not going to maximize his own abilities by trying to be one of them, but aside from the bigs (Jokic, Embiid, etc.) those are probably the guys he tries to model himself after. He's still a work in progress, and he needs to figure out how he can most impact winning, using his own unique range of abilities.
Tatum made a bunch of non scoring plays in OT against Detroit, including a huge rebound and long outlet pass to KP for a dunk. Besides the two big assists in the OT, he made a number of swing passes that led to buckets in the 20 point OT.
I get it that his insistence on taking those pull up threes on this loaded squad is frustrating. Part of his game has been to get switched off on taller covers and pulling up over them. This team really doesn’t need him to do that anymore. It will be interesting to see if Tatum evolves his game to better blend it with this talent so the offense is more efficient.
I get it that his insistence on taking those pull up threes on this loaded squad is frustrating. Part of his game has been to get switched off on taller covers and pulling up over them. This team really doesn’t need him to do that anymore. It will be interesting to see if Tatum evolves his game to better blend it with this talent so the offense is more efficient.
KP's number alone doesn't make him "literally the best low post scorer in the NBA" as was said above. It shows that his teammates and coach are really fuckin good at identifying matchups when KP has an enormous advantage. Last night with Cade giving up 9" to him is one example of this.
KP almost exclusively posts against mismatches, and it works beautifully. I’d rather him not bang in the post against bigger dudes lol, at least not before the playoffs.
Sure but is it enough of an advantage to take the ball out of Tatum's hands? He is susceptible to getting moved off his spot by though with strong lower bodies too.
He needs mismatches, but the Celtics have been able to generate those pretty easily when they want them, because the alternative to switching is Tatum or DWhite steaming downhill to the basket.
I don't have time to go catalogue all the recent Tatum pullup 3s, like we did a week or two ago, but most of them are still awful. Not that late in the shot clock, with lineups against which you could get KP mismatches, etc.
There aren't really good arguments for it at this point. He's just playing lazily on those possessions, and throwing them away.
I don't have time to go catalogue all the recent Tatum pullup 3s, like we did a week or two ago, but most of them are still awful. Not that late in the shot clock, with lineups against which you could get KP mismatches, etc.
There aren't really good arguments for it at this point. He's just playing lazily on those possessions, and throwing them away.
This will blow your mind even further, the ball will be in Derrick White's hands
in those situations going forward with KP/JT in horns set.JJ Redick predicted all of this 2 months ago, after talking with CJM. JJ saw this a mile away: KP post-effect, JAY sacrifice, Derrick White initiator, DW upside, etc
JJ is by far the best in the media business. People should follow him as much as possible.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vifdrfRkWIk
If the option is a Porzingis post up or a Tatum step back three with a guy in his face…yes. Yes it is.
I think a few posts are dripping with sarcasm around here but KP has leaned heavily into analytics. His post-up efficiency against mismatches wasn't an accident last season & it is something he looks for. His post-game opens up the floor for paint touches, which should lead to wide open catch-n-shoot step-in 3s.
JJ gets into it with KP here, well worth the hour. Go to 17:30 for analytics conversation
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq9PXclzFjc&t=2401s
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and the Question isn't who is better between Tatum vs Porzingis vs White
Tatum is the best.
It's about putting Tatum in the best position to succeed & making him his best self (Brad speak).
A more efficient Tatum also means his 3PA & counting #s will trend lower which hurts his MVP chances amongst the media nitwits that love themselves some POINTZ!
Tatum is the best.
It's about putting Tatum in the best position to succeed & making him his best self (Brad speak).
A more efficient Tatum also means his 3PA & counting #s will trend lower which hurts his MVP chances amongst the media nitwits that love themselves some POINTZ!
