How Jayson Tatum Felt About Charles Barkley’s Celtics Critiques

Charles Barkley is never one to hold back an opinion, and Celtics star Jayson Tatum had a chance to respond to the Basketball Hall of Famer’s view of his team’s title hopes.

The Boston forward was on CBS Mornings on Tuesday to discuss a partnership between the Jayson Tatum Foundation and SoFi to make a multi-year commitment and donate more than $1 million that will go to single parents in his hometown of St. Louis.

Tatum’s segment ended with a basketball question, and Nate Burleson asked what the All-NBA forward thought of Barkley’s opinion that the Celtics aren’t tough enough to win a championship.

“I mean you have to give the respect, right?” Tatum told the panel. “Those are the guys that paved the way for the younger players like myself.”

Barkley’s comments came during the halftime show of this month’s matchup against the Milwaukee Bucks where the Celtics were demolished. Gayle King, who hosts a CNN show with Barkley, interjected, believing a “but” was going to come with Tatum’s comments.

“You don’t always have to agree,” Tatum said. “But you have to, in a sense, respect it because of the work that they put in. I understand that in the times that we’re in, you can’t win it — nobody can win a championship until you do it. So nobody’s going to give us the credit until we actually do it and that’s fine. We don’t necessarily pay attention to the outside noise. There’s a group of us in that locker room that go to war with each other every day. And we’re up for the challenge.”

Indeed no matter what is said or done on the court during the regular season won’t matter unless Boston puts all the pieces together to secure the franchise its 18th banner. But the spotlight will be even brighter this postseason with how well the Celtics played this season and how dysfunctional the Bucks and Philadelphia 76ers have been.