The Boston Celtics looked like a totally different team from Wednesday to Friday (in some respects they were, literally), and part of it had to do with Jayson Tatum.
For as gifted of a player as Tatum has been in his young career, one thing that often has felled him was his unwillingness to get to the rim. When he’s on, he’s on from the perimeter, but it long has seemed like he tries too hard to get in a rhythm by shooting instead of just getting to the rim and banking some easy points.
The end result in Friday’s 122-114 win over the Milwaukee Bucks was a 13-for-18 effort from the field, knocking down four of his seven 3-point attempts. He also was 4-for-4 from the foul line, finishing with 34 points altogether.
Tatum readily admitted that getting to the dirtier areas helped get him going.
“I just tried to be more aggressive,” Tatum said after the game, via The Boston Globe. “And attacking the rim a little bit more and that opened up the game for me a little bit.”
Perhaps the addition of Evan Fournier, a true knockdown perimeter shooter, might allow Tatum to not feel like the onus is on him and Jaylen Brown to handle all of the Celtics’ shooting. Time will tell.
But Friday was another indication that good things tend to happen when Tatum gets to the paint instead of trying to do all his offensive work 25 feet out.
