As he addressed reporters from the media day dais on the eve of Celtics training camp, Jayson Tatum confidently declared his team wasn’t satisfied with last season’s NBA championship.
In his words, “It was never just about trying to win one.”
Boston’s headlining superstar believes the Celtics, after keeping nearly their entire 2023-24 roster intact, are well-positioned to avoid the post-title cliff that awaited the last five NBA champs, all of whom failed to even reach the conference finals the following season.
Tatum also believes his first championship wasn’t the culmination of his basketball journey.
“At 26, and I guess as accomplished as I am, I just always feel like overall, I can still get better,” Tatum said during a media day interview with NBC Sports Boston. “You haven’t seen the best version of Jayson Tatum. And you shouldn’t, right? I’m only 26. I should continue to keep getting better.”
On top of hoisting the Larry O’Brien Trophy for the first time after a half-decade of late-playoff heartbreak, Tatum also earned his third straight first-team All-NBA selection, appeared on the cover of “NBA 2K25” and signed the richest contract in league history — a five-year, $314 supermax deal that ties him to Boston through at least the 2028-29 campaign.
By almost any measure – personal success, team success, contract value, visibility, etc. – he’s one of the absolute best basketball players on the planet and one of the faces of the NBA.
Yet some still believe Tatum is a rung below the league’s true elite class – a notion Steve Kerr underscored by turning him into a bit player at the Summer Olympics. Tatum didn’t leave the bench in two of Team USA’s six games and played the second-fewest minutes of any U.S. player in the tournament, sparking harsh critiques of Kerr’s roster management.
Tatum said his Olympic DNPs, coupled with the fact that the NBA Finals MVP award went not to him but to teammate Jaylen Brown, probably made Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla “the happiest person in the world.”
Mazzulla confirmed that Wednesday, saying Tatum was “100 percent right.” He also agreed that Tatum’s best hoops still are ahead of him.
“That’s just the way that I love him,” Mazzulla explained. “It’s the relationship that we have, and I appreciate that he accepts my perspective and the way that we go about talking about it. But at the end of the day, he’s 26 and I just said, ‘Listen, you’ve accomplished so much in this league. And just take a step back and appreciate that and then be grateful that you’ve got, God willing, 10, 12, 14 years left in this league. Who knows what you’re going to see?’
“And I don’t think we’ve seen the best of him yet because of how much he works and how he’s willing to grow. So I thought it was great that he has something to work toward.”
That work began during the lead-up to Celtics camp. Along with trainer Drew Hanlen, Tatum has taken steps to rewire his jump shot, which lacked its usual consistency during the NBA playoffs and the Olympics.
Though Hanlen made sure to note on social media that Tatum’s 3-point shooting percentage last season was right in line with his career average – and better than fellow Olympians Devin Booker, Anthony Edwards and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander – it dipped precipitously in the postseason, from 37.6% to 28.3%. Then, in his limited playing time in Paris, he missed all 16 of his jump shots, with his only makes coming on dunks and layups.
Since returning, Tatum said he’s made “a few mechanical” adjustments – “pick-up points, points, hand placement, getting lower, keeping my shoulders forward and things like that” – that he chose not to address during Boston’s playoff run.
Despite his wayward shot, Tatum still led all Celtics players in points, rebounds and assists during both the postseason and the NBA Finals.
“There’s some things I could’ve fixed,” the eighth-year pro said. “But just in the midst of the playoffs trying to manage your rest and things like that, it’s a little tougher. I was still playing well, just wasn’t shooting the ball as well as I would have liked, and obviously we were winning, so it wasn’t the time or place to try to fix things in that moment.”
5/27/24 vs. 9/25/24 https://t.co/1otykBry2Z pic.twitter.com/tcQxvrNGjk
— Pull up shoot (@NElGHT_) September 25, 2024
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Tatum has another 3 1/2 weeks to work out any lingering kinks and prepare himself for what should be a more challenging Celtics slate this season. The Eastern Conference, which Boston won by a remarkable 14 games a year ago, looks more formidable after the Knicks and 76ers added Mikal Bridges and Paul George, respectively, with the talented Bucks and Cavaliers also lingering. The Celtics open the season against New York on Oct. 22.
With Kristaps Porzingis – the Celtics’ starting center and third-best player – set to miss the first month-plus of the regular season as he recovers from leg surgery, Boston will need to rely more on Tatum and Brown than is necessary when its roster is at full strength. Motivation should not be an issue for either, as Brown also had his talents questioned when he was left off the Olympic team entirely.
“Sometimes when you get success, you don’t have that next hunger right in front of you,” Mazzulla said. “Sometimes you’ve got to wait for it. Sometimes it’s a loss, sometimes it’s a losing streak. (Tatum) was able to get that right in front of him (at the Olympics). So I just thought it was a gift.
“It doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t be pissed off about it. I didn’t want to take away from how that may affect him in real time because I wasn’t there. But as his coach and as somebody that really cares about him, I just thought it was great because it gives him something to work toward for the rest of his career.”
