Lets not overlook the fact... Jayson Tatum exposed

[Patsfan1081]

Agree with this. I’m assuming kawhi comes back close to his best, so that’s 8 players definitely ahead of Tatum. After that it’s a bit of ‘what do you prefer’ with guys like Ja, Tatum, Booker, AD, Butler etc

At this point in their career, why is Lebron definitely ahead of Tatum? Lebron has the slight statistical advantage but pretty much everyone would agree that they aren't even close defensively.

Come to think of it, why is Embiid definitely ahead of Tatum? by the logic of this thread, Embiid lost in the second round so surely, Tatum is the better player?

I do see your logic. Embiid hasn’t even been past the second round, and Lebron didn’t even make the play in. But it’s just a gut feeling from watching those guys. If you swap this version of Lebron with Tatum, do the Celtics improve? I think they 100% do. With embiid, it’s mainly the ability to stay healthy, but at their best, I’m taking Embiid as the more impactful player every day of the week, and I think their peers would all agree.

Well nobody has played more minutes in the last five years than Tatum, on top of U.S basketball. Not trying to make excuses, Tatum def underachieved, but I’m guessing if he had a full summer off and played in only 60 games we would have seen a different player in the paint in that series.

[Impuniti]

Outside of Kawhi who played under Duncan's wing, nobody that's 24 and a superstar wins a ring at that age. It didn't happen with Lebron, Steph, KD, Giannis, Harden, or Jokic. Can't say a 24 year old was exposed when he swept the Nets, beat last year's champs & the #1 seed in the East.

[Jadoogar]

Outside of Kawhi who played under Duncan's wing, nobody that's 24 and a superstar wins a ring at that age. It didn't happen with Lebron, Steph, KD, Giannis, Harden, or Jokic. Can't say a 24 year old was exposed when he swept the Nets, beat last year's champs & the #1 seed in the East.

Dwyane Wade.

[binjumper]

A month ago he shut down and beat Giannis. It took the greatest NBA team in recent memory to stop Tatum and Celtics. He is also 24 I believe, most all time greats with multiple championships didnt win their first ship until they were closing to 30.

Do people even know what exposed mean. I mean I am no expert of this language, but to me, exposed would mean that someone exposed so previously unknown weakness of something, lets say a player, that makes that player useless from now on with opponents having that knowledge. Tatum is far from eposed, he sucked, but he will come back stronger.

LOL....cmon man. I just gave Tatum his props, he will be back to this level if they keep that team together.

However, he did not shut down Giannis and his team beat Giannis's team. He barely guarded Giannis that was mostly Horford/Grant Williams...and even still Giannis put up:

24/13/12
28/9/7
42/12/8
34/16/18
40/11/3
44/20/6
25/20/9


If that is shutting down then Giannis is better than I thought. But Tatum was not exposed. I hate whenever a player loses a game or a series he is "exposed." What a joke! Tatum is a great player and ascending every year.

Fair fair, but Giannis did had his share of struggles that I guess doesnt really appear on a stat sheat, and Tatum + Horford were great defensively in that series.

The only struggle was having to play that series without Middleton. Bucks would've been in the finals had Middleton not got hurt.

[bfchs123]

Outside of Kawhi who played under Duncan's wing, nobody that's 24 and a superstar wins a ring at that age. It didn't happen with Lebron, Steph, KD, Giannis, Harden, or Jokic. Can't say a 24 year old was exposed when he swept the Nets, beat last year's champs & the #1 seed in the East.

Dwyane Wade.

Played under Shaq's wing though...hard to discount the Shaq impact when they went from a .500 team to a ~60 win team once he joined (though yes Wade started improving too).

[Jadoogar]

Outside of Kawhi who played under Duncan's wing, nobody that's 24 and a superstar wins a ring at that age. It didn't happen with Lebron, Steph, KD, Giannis, Harden, or Jokic. Can't say a 24 year old was exposed when he swept the Nets, beat last year's champs & the #1 seed in the East.

Dwyane Wade.

Played under Shaq's wing though...hard to discount the Shaq impact when they went from a .500 team to a ~60 win team once he joined (though yes Wade started improving too).

No one wins a title on their own. Wade was absolutely the best player on that team.

[Woodsanity]

Outside of Kawhi who played under Duncan's wing, nobody that's 24 and a superstar wins a ring at that age. It didn't happen with Lebron, Steph, KD, Giannis, Harden, or Jokic. Can't say a 24 year old was exposed when he swept the Nets, beat last year's champs & the #1 seed in the East.

No one is talking about winning a ring we are talking about his overall trash play the entire playoffs.

[bfchs123]

Outside of Kawhi who played under Duncan's wing, nobody that's 24 and a superstar wins a ring at that age. It didn't happen with Lebron, Steph, KD, Giannis, Harden, or Jokic. Can't say a 24 year old was exposed when he swept the Nets, beat last year's champs & the #1 seed in the East.

No one is talking about winning a ring we are talking about his overall trash play the entire playoffs.

Are you sure you were watching the right playoffs lol? Up until the Finals, he had averaged 27/6/7 on 45/38/83...

[maverick_41]

Give him a break! He clearly played hurt in the Finals after the shoulder injury sustained against the Heat. What else can explain his multiple 0/2 from the line far away from the clutch?

[DroseReturnChi]

Outside of Kawhi who played under Duncan's wing, nobody that's 24 and a superstar wins a ring at that age. It didn't happen with Lebron, Steph, KD, Giannis, Harden, or Jokic. Can't say a 24 year old was exposed when he swept the Nets, beat last year's champs & the #1 seed in the East.

24 yr is pretty old why is a stacked team not winning a title strange? even 538 said they had 83% to win and tatum just intentionally cost it. come on all the guys listed are mostly late bloomers and horrible teams your just giving lousy excuses to play bad and get away with it.

[LegendOfSalmons]

Outside of Kawhi who played under Duncan's wing, nobody that's 24 and a superstar wins a ring at that age. It didn't happen with Lebron, Steph, KD, Giannis, Harden, or Jokic. Can't say a 24 year old was exposed when he swept the Nets, beat last year's champs & the #1 seed in the East.

Well that's just the thing, he's not a superstar. He's a very good player who has gotten extremely overrated. The superstar moniker should be reserved for top 10 players. Tatum is not a top 10 player and it's arguable that he's not even the best player on his own team. He's not on the level of any of those guys so just chill. Oh and Nets got swept but they were dysfunctional. Impressive but not really that impressive if you really look closely. Last year's champs were beat in 7 games without their second best player. Quite unimpressive. Miami were paper tigers are many on here liked too call them. Even though the defense was good, the Heat also missed a ton of wide open 3s and were dealing with injuries of their own. Tatum got exposed and there's no harm in being honest about it so don't downplay it. Once again, he's not a superstar by any means either. Stop with the overrating.

To be completely honest, I think Boston would have won game 4 to go up 3-1 and likely would have gone on to win the series had Tatum simply played the game the right way. He had too much pride to allow him to do that though and he just needed to be the alpha instead of allowing Brown and the rest of the team who were playing nicely to seal the deal for him. He ended up costing himself and his teammates a ring in the process with his ill advised selfish antics.

The deep run and the emotional drain of two game 7s before the finals will likely result in an off year for him and the Celtics. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the best of Tatum that we see.

[London2Boston]

The fact that getting to the finals and losing always seems to harm your reputation more than not even sniffing the finals will always make no sense to me.

[Blazing_royale]

He's Indiana Paul George.

[Roronoa]

I dislike the Celtics, but to say he was exposed is absurd. He's 24 and made the finals as the number #1 option. How many guys winning titles at 24?

[Woodsanity]

He's Indiana Paul George.

Pretty much this. Just with more help.

[tsherkin]

24 yr is pretty old

Historically, that's a 2nd- or 3rd-year player. Now, it represents someone around the 5th year of their career in the league. That's not old, that's beginning of prime. Plenty of athletic prime remaining, bunch of experience and skill development under their belt. Tatum's about to hit the 6th year of his career, with nearly a full season's worth of playoff games under his belt for extra experience above and beyond that. But that's not "old" in the context of this sport. And his production, Finals series aside, was really good in the postseason.

"Old" would imply that he doesn't have a lot of time left, and we have mountains of evidence to show how non-sensical that is across a wide variety of player types and eras. Tatum isn't even a heavily athletic-dependent player, so he has the potential to have a rather extended prime, too, which REALLY reinforces how odd a remark this was from you.