Jayson Tatum entered his fifth season as a two-time All-Star who’d already made one All-NBA team and two conference finals. Coming off a disappointing and chaotic 36–36 campaign that precipitated major changes in the Celtics’ infrastructure, expectations remained sky high for Tatum, who, at the age of 23, had already established himself as one of the sport’s most polished and dynamic scorers.
But for Boston to ultimately move in the right direction—especially after starting point guard Kemba Walker was traded to the Thunder—they’d need Tatum to buck lingering reservations about his ability to make the game easier for everyone around him, while still satiating his own need to get shots up. The circumstance begged a simple question: How good of a playmaker could he be?
It wouldn’t be reasonable to think the answer should be him one day surveying the floor like LeBron James, James Harden or Luka Dončić, hulkish point guards at heart who can lead/have led the league in assists. But to flourish as broadly as his talent demands, Tatum would have to improve his decision-making and display the same effective self-sacrifice that Kevin Durant, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kawhi Leonard and other comparable archetypes have mastered, setting others up when positioned as a primary ball-handler against defenses that are programmed to slow them down. In August, incoming Celtics head coach Ime Udoka said Tatum’s growth here was critical. And for it to happen he’d need to ripen inside a brand new system, beside several different teammates, with no conventional point guard in the starting lineup.
Despite a 41-point, eight-assist performance against the Hornets in the fourth game of the season, the road towards becoming the well-rounded offensive force Boston needed him to be was bumpy early on, and it didn’t take long for criticism to surge.
After their infamous meltdown against the Bulls in early November, Marcus Smart said this about Tatum and Jaylen Brown, “They don’t want to pass the ball and that’s something that they’re going to learn … they are going to have to make another step and find ways to not only create for themselves but create for others on this team, to open up the court for them later in the game where they don’t always have to take those tough shots or take tough matchups when they do get the 1-on-1 and see a trap.”
A few weeks later, as Tatum struggled to find his shot and averaged only 3.4 assists per game through the season’s first 20, one anonymous assistant coach in the Eastern Conference called him self-centered: “Jayson Tatum is about Jayson Tatum. I don't think he cares about winning now, and if he does, it is on his terms. … He doesn't want to score 15 and win. He wants to score 39 and win.” Even 93-year-old Celtics legend Bob Cousy felt the need to chime in: “Right now, at crunch time in the fourth quarter, they’re giving it to Brown and Tatum to create for themselves and 70 percent of the time they do, but they don’t have the creating skills that a clever point guard would have, so they [expletive] it up.”
Fast forward to today, and it’s safe to say the 2021–22 season will be remembered as a transformative turning point in Tatum’s career, with a direct correlation between his own course correction and Boston’s shocking turnaround. Not only has he become an expert at making split-second decisions that place the team’s interests above his own—out of pick-and-rolls, in isolation and from the post—but his vision is now honed as an outright strength to the point where it’s okay to label him as one of the most intuitive playmakers at his position.