Godymas wrote:Tatum has not been good this playoffs. All efficiency has been down, he's been making bone headed mistakes, he's kind of been folding under some of the expectations this year. Jaylen Brown has been outperforming him so far in the ECF, Derrick White has been a better player overall for the playoffs the role players have really been stepping up overall. Really like what I've seen from Kornet, Pritchard, Hauser. Jrue has been really good this playoffs, Al Horford has been massively outperforming his age, and JB has been making some of the most important buckets. It really feels like if JB's shot is falling the Celtics are unbeatable. All of this with Porzingis still waiting to hop back in.
It makes me think of the more classic "superstar" carried teams. The LeBron Cavs, Butler Heat, Jokic Nuggets, Giannis Bucks, you KNOW exactly who is going to win their team the game. Like yes, they have guys behind them (less so for LeBron, especially in 2018), but their Robins are true Robins. Middleton, Murray, Bam/Herro, etc. they have their games, but at no point do you feel there is a loss of who's team it truly is. Clearly the if these teams win the FMVP is very likely to go to Jokic, Giannis, Butler, LeBron, etc.
I have a hard time really classifying Tatum as a "superstar" in the league. I will admit that what he did in their 2022 run was really nice, especially in that game 6 at Milwaukee where he became a flamethrower, but Tatum has always felt like he lacked that "dog" mentality. Like he's just a smart good star player at basketball. There's a reason why most people say Tatum is "an AI generated superstar" because when you watch him play, when you hear him talk, it's just kind of like "whatever".
It feels like if Boston wins, the credit won't really be that heavily on Tatum, even if he manages to secure the FMVP (which I think a lot of people would really doubt he does considering the other guys on the team). This doesn't feel like a "Jayson Tatum team". I've never seen a "superstar" so blatantly replaceable as Jayson Tatum on their team. I don't really believe that he is a superstar but just a nice star player that gets a bit more credit than he deserves because he plays on a stacked Boston Celtics team. Because they are the Celtics, the league and the city of Boston will market Tatum like the face of their sports scene and superstar in the league, but he is closer to that "nice star player" that has his moments type of deal. I mean in this playoffs, most everyone would say so far that Anthony Edwards, Luka Doncic, SGA, Jokic, and Brunson have been clearly better superstars for their teams than Tatum has been at all for Boston.
It kind of pushes me back to how Tatum was drafted to an immediate contending team, he's been always in the playoffs because Boston has been contending with him since day 1, he's had the most opportunity to succeed of nearly ANY elite prospect and this year has been the most obvious "Boston take it" year there ever was and somehow in the most clear moment of it all, he's not been up to a standard that you would expect for someone of his caliber. I was never sold on Tatum being "that guy" until the 2022 playoffs, and then I thought, "alright he's actually really good" but this year as kind of reverted that big time and I don't see Tatum being able to do something amazing like what Curry did in Boston in 2022, or what Giannis did in game 6 in the finals in 2021, or how Butler completely dismantled the Bucks in the first round last year, I can see a world where Tatum makes the right plays because his COACH put him in a position where all the elite talent around him is setting him up to succeed, but I can't see Tatum purely outplaying and ascending to a new height. Especially considering how Boston has not felt that special against Indiana so far, it's tough to really think highly of Tatum and even if he becomes a champion this year, and maybe Boston becomes a dynasty, but it feels like Tatum just happened to be in the right place at the right time, rather than being the driver of his own destiny and it feels like he might end up overrated years down the line when people see his All NBA 1st team selections and playoffs numbers when if you watched the game you'd never have felt that he was some all time great type of player.
I mean I'd be shocked if Boston manages to beat Dallas in the finals, truthfully, because the finals are almost always determined by "who is the best player on the court" and Tatum will not be the best player on the court, he might not even be the best player on his own team in those finals, and it really continues this narrative of how Tatum is "boring" and "auto generated" and "a filler star" and all the other criticisms that go his way.
In short, Tatum is a system player.
