Jayson Tatum has been everything the Boston Celtics hoped he would be when they selected him with the No. 3 overall pick in last year’s NBA Draft.
In fact, if you ask head coach Brad Stevens, the Duke product has exceeded his expectations.
Coming into the 2017-18 season, Tatum was expected to be a key piece of Boston’s bench, but the 20-year-old was thrust into a bigger role when Gordon Hayward suffered a gruesome injury five minutes into the season. The rookie’s importance to the Celtics has continued to grow with each injury the team has sustained, the latest of which ended Kyrie Irving’s season.
And even Stevens didn’t think Tatum would be this good, this early.
“Initially, I thought, you know, he would be very good,” Stevens said Tuesday on ESPN’s “Golic and Wingo.” “We thought that he would be able to score, you know, off of actions and insert matchups isolation-wise, early on in the league, and that he would just get better over time with continued hard work on and off the court. And I think where he exceeded my expectations was, is that he probably does that more consistently than I even imagined.
“And then defensively, it’s probably not close to what I expected, just because he’s 19,” Stevens added. “Obviously, he’s had tremendous coaching in his career, going to Duke and in high school. But it’s just such a change, it’s just such a different game in the NBA. And for him to be able to impact the game defensively with his length, his instincts — and now, as all the hard work he’s put in on his techniques — you know it’s been really, really impressive.
“When we started the year, I would have guessed that he’s probably coming off the bench and playing a very significant role for us there, maybe 20 to 25 minutes a game. I never would have guessed that he’s going to be one of our team leaders in minutes and start every game.”
Tatum is averaging 13.9 points per game on 47.8 percent shooting while knocking down 43.1 percent of his 3-point attempts.
With Irving and Hayward both out for the C’s playoff run, Tatum will be relied upon in a way that Stevens didn’t imagine coming into the year.
But he’s shown he’s up to the challenge.
