Then the Phoenix Suns coach, Watson had played with or coached some of the best shooters ever: Ray Allen, Kevin Durant, Mike Miller, Damian Lillard and Jason Kapono. Watson had seen them do some incredible things, but he does not recall any workout quite like Jayson Tatum’s pre-draft audition for the Suns. Tatum warmed up with a ballhandling drill, Watson recalled during a phone call Monday afternoon, and then the wing went straight to the corner to shoot 3-pointers. Players normally work their way out to the arc slowly, taking closer shots first. Tatum did not bother. Even without any shots to loosen up, he was already hot.
“He drilled 40 straight off the first shot,” Watson said. “Forty straight. So I immediately turned to the owner and the GM. And I said, ‘What else do we need to see?’”
Already, Watson was sold on pairing Tatum with Suns star Devin Booker. In Watson’s vision, the two wings would split time on and off the ball. They would make the Suns competitive early in their careers while possibly growing into one of the NBA’s best duos. Watson wanted Tatum badly enough to hold what he called “uncomfortable” conversations with team owner Robert Sarver, trying to convince the organization it should do whatever it took to draft the Duke star. Sarver preferred Josh Jackson, Watson said, but Watson kept pushing back with a different idea.
“We need to **** get Tatum,” Watson recalled saying.
Whatever it took, even if it meant trading up in the draft, Watson wanted Tatum. He even secured Tatum’s approval for the idea. On the All the Smoke podcast this week, Tatum revealed that he initially wanted the Suns — not the Celtics — to draft him. After meeting with Watson, Tatum said he called his mother and told her he hoped to land in Phoenix. The broken dream is a what-if Watson still wonders about, not for the impact it would have had on his career — he was fired three games into the next season — but for the possibilities the Tatum-Booker duo would have unlocked.
“As a fan,” Watson said, “that what-if moment lives with me every day. As a fan who just loves to watch basketball, man, that would have been crazy. Crazy.”
Here’s a look back at how Watson pitched Tatum on Phoenix and why the mutual interest ultimately failed to matter.
About a week before the 2017 draft, Tatum visited Phoenix to meet with Watson and the rest of the Suns brass. That day, Watson brought the youngster along while he drove to Marquese Chriss’ house for a routine checkup he would often make with the younger Suns players.
“I was actually checking up on his house to make sure he had enough food in the fridge,” Watson said. “Because he’s a young player, I just wanted to make sure it’s not, like, just ice cream and cookies.”
Watson and Tatum chatted throughout the ride. They had a previous connection: Watson had grown up in the Midwest playing basketball against Tatum’s father, Justin, and Justin’s close friend Larry Hughes. That common bond helped, but Watson and Tatum mostly discussed non-basketball topics. As Watson recalled, they chatted about life goals and family more than anything else. Watson said the two clicked quickly. Eventually, Tatum asked how the coach envisioned using him on the court.
Watson had already been wowed by Tatum’s workout weeks earlier. The Suns at the time were built around Booker and Eric Bledsoe, but because of their age difference, Watson did not consider the pairing a realistic long-term fit unless the organization committed to a supporting cast of older, established veterans. Not sensing the Suns intended to do that, Watson said he stressed to ownership that pairing Booker and Tatum would be for the best. In the car with Tatum, Watson explained his vision to the youngster.
“I told him it was limitless,” Watson said. “I had no problem building through him and Booker and playing the type of basketball where everyone touches it and moves it and swings it around.”
In the car, according to Watson, Tatum shared that he wanted the Suns to pick him, that he felt most comfortable with Phoenix and believed in the coach’s vision. On the All The Smoke podcast, Tatum said the Suns were indeed his No. 1 option at the time. Leading up to the draft, he essentially knew Markelle Fultz and Lonzo Ball would be the first two overall selections. After Boston traded down into the third pick, Tatum hoped to fall to fourth and head to Phoenix.
“Earl is my guy,” Tatum said. “I called my mom, I’m like, ‘Yo, I think I want to go to Phoenix.’”
Even when the Celtics called to try setting up a second workout, Tatum said he told his agent, Jeff Wechsler, he liked it in Phoenix and did not want to go to Boston. The weather in Phoenix was nice. Tatum thought he could buy a big house with a pool and his mother would be all right there. His agent tried to sell him on the Celtics’ merits, but Tatum wasn’t budging.
“We hang up,” Tatum said. “I’m like, ‘I’m not going to this workout. I’m cool.’”
After receiving a phone call from Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, who praised Stevens and the Celtics, Tatum ultimately agreed to attend the workout in Boston. He flew to Massachusetts for the audition, then took a train afterward to the draft in New York. The first two picks of the draft went just as Tatum anticipated. Philadelphia took Fultz and the Lakers took Ball. The Celtics then chose Tatum with the third pick, one spot before the Suns took Jackson.
“When I finally heard my name called it was by far the best day of my life because it was what I’d been working for, for 16 years,” Tatum said. “But there was a part of me that didn’t really want to go to Boston because they just were the No. 1 team in the East. They had Isaiah Thomas, Al Horford, (Marcus) Smart, (Jaylen Brown), Jae Crowder. I was like, man, I’m not going to play. I’m trying to get buckets. But everything worked out.”
Everything worked out for Tatum, but not for Watson and the Suns. They stayed at No. 4 and took Jackson, who played only two seasons in Phoenix before the franchise traded him for an underwhelming haul. Watson said he loves Jackson and believes the wing will still be a dynamic player, but he thought Tatum was the clear-cut option from the start. Regardless of the Suns’ interest, they would have needed to move up in the draft to select him.
“I was pushing Tatum,” Watson said. “Like, we had to move up for Tatum, we had to get Tatum. And ownership chose Josh Jackson. … I knew the two players were dynamically different, but my vision was what’s the best fit for Devin Booker. Booker and Tatum, I think a combination like that right now would have been completely different than anything in the NBA at that age.”
Watson recognized in Tatum some of the same gifts that have made Booker one of the NBA’s top scorers. As Watson sees it, it’s about not only their high skill levels but also their ability to function mentally in the heat of an NBA game. If most very good players can string together one counter move, maybe two, Watson saw in Booker and Tatum the ability to hit a defender with four or five counters in succession.
“It’s like a cheat code in (NBA) 2K,” Watson said. “Their mind can quickly adjust and change into counters. I call those out-of-pattern players. Their pattern was so unique and abnormal.”
As much as the combination made sense to Watson, he said Sarver saw the situation differently. He remembers Sarver saying of the Suns, “We do not need another Devin Booker.” The owner believed Tatum’s skills might too closely shadow Booker’s. Watson realized the wings would actually accentuate each other, especially with the NBA veering more toward versatility, interchangeability and skill. Tatum’s pre-draft workout for the Suns, in Los Angeles, only solidified Watson’s belief in the pairing’s potential. Beginning with the shooting demonstration, it was, as Watson said, “a crazy workout.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Watson said. “I could see it quick like I saw it in Devin Booker quick, when people questioned it. I could see it quick. And (during the shooting drill) the owner stopped him. I don’t know how many more he could have made, but the owner stopped the drill. And you don’t stop that drill. You just don’t. You just sit there and you admire it and you stay out of the way. So the owner stops the drill and says, ‘That’s nice. What else can you do?’ I’m like, ‘What? What? The workout should be over. This is our guy.’”
Despite the interruption, Watson said Tatum never wavered during the workout. Whereas some other prospects showed up late for their additions, he arrived on time and ready to work. Watson thought Tatum already carried himself like a professional even though he was still a teenager. The more Watson got to know Tatum, the more he liked him. And he had liked Tatum for years before the pre-draft process — he remembered Tatum dominating his AAU teams in the Midwest. He saw the wing as “a highly skilled, sneaky-athletic isolation scorer with the ability to take over games down the clutch, but also with enough character to play within a system and care more about his teammates than his own stats.”
With basketball trending more toward open offenses and 3-point shooting, Watson believed Phoenix’s fortunes would have changed “really quickly” with a young core built around Booker and Tatum. That may have been true. The potential would have been enormous, but no matter how much Watson wanted to see it happen, the Suns never got the opportunity to find out.
“A lot of my ideas were considered crazy back then,” Watson said, laughing.
Of course, he knows his Tatum-Booker idea wasn’t actually crazy at all.
