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Most Complete Player: Jayson Tatum
This label does not mean Tatum is the best player in the world. Instead, view it as a way to mark his remarkable development. It’s Year 6 and the fat has been sizzled entirely out of his game. No star has fewer weaknesses.
Tatum can shoot, pass, dribble, rebound, defend, read the floor, draw fouls, and score from all three levels in myriad ways—posting up on the block, isolating on the wing, functioning in pick-and-rolls as both a ball handler and screener—at an elite level. He’s averaging a whopping 32.3 points, 7.2 rebounds, and 4.1 assists per game, shooting 50 percent from the floor, 59.6 percent inside the arc, and 38.7 percent from 3-point range on 9.5 tries a night.
As a bona fide MVP candidate who would scoot past Luka in this very column if his supporting cast wasn’t so much more impressive than Doncic’s—whose best teammate this season has been Spencer Dinwiddie—it’s all coming together. Tatum has touch, footwork, every ballhandling counter in the book, and a brain that seamlessly combines all of it without wasting any movement. He’s taking 4.4 more free throw attempts than his career average and shooting 81.4 percent at the rim.
Again, this doesn’t mean he’s “better” than Doncic, Curry, or Jokic, but none are ever asked to guard the other team’s best player, or able to help (he’s currently averaging the same number of blocks per game as Jarrett Allen) like the conservatively measured 6-foot-8 Tatum can. This doesn’t mean he’s better than Giannis. But when defenses load in the paint, Tatum has no problem creating a high-percentage shot by himself from the perimeter, then reliably making eight (not six) out of every 10 free throws. (It’s hard to think of any other player better than Tatum right now.)
Tatum controls games without dominating the ball. His fingerprints are all over this four-point swing:
He enhances Boston’s actions with the selflessness of a star who understands when to impose himself on a game and when to turn a defense’s aggression against itself.
Whenever healthy over the past few years, Kawhi Leonard was this guy, an all-around menace whose skill set was a perfect mesh of dominance and malleability. The closest thing to a create-a-player who turns every category up to 95. Tatum has officially grabbed that torch, and at 24 years old is still getting better. Nothing looks hard because he can now do everything so well.
