Jayson Tatum's undergone the highs and lows of reaching the NBA Finals and losing to a No. 8 seed Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals with the Boston Celtics, but the 26-year-old isn't discouraged in the slightest.
Boston is currently the best team (57-15) in the NBA, having already clinched the No. 1 seed in the East with 10 games remaining before the playoffs. But achieving regular season success isn't anything new to the Tatum-led Celtics, who have appeared in four conference finals series. But Tatum believes those past battles with LeBron James and Jimmy Butler, while daunting memories for the most part, will benefit Boston in the long run.
"Experience is the best teacher, right? The last few years being that close and not getting over the hump obviously was extremely tough," Tatum explained on NBA on TNT Tuesday night. "And I think everybody on our team is in a perfect place in their career. We've all accomplished individual things, everybody's gotten paid, and the last thing for most of us -- except for Jrue Holiday -- is we all trying to get over that hump. And I think we have the right group, the right mindset to do those things. Obviously, we still have to do it, stay healthy and continue to play the right way. But our mindset is where it needs to be."
The Celtics do have experience on their side, which in the early stages of Tatum's and Jaylen Brown's respective rises to stardom, was what exonerated them in Boston's playoff struggles over the past six years.
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Since Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens upgraded the team's roster through the significant additions of Kristaps Porzingis and Holiday in the offseason, Boston's made a complete 180 turn. Tatum and Brown have been at the forefront of the team's sacrifice-demanding style of play, allowing the supporting cast to shine routinely. The depth has been stellar, keeping the team undefeated in games when two or more starters are out. And most impressively, the Celtics never gave up the No. 1 seed after reclaiming it from the Philadelphia 76ers on Nov. 14.
Most recently, the mindset that's propelled the Celtics to reside cozy in the regular season mountaintop for a multi-month span came into question. Taking a nine-game winning streak into Atlanta against a Trae Young-less Hawks team Monday night, Boston abandoned its roots and fell content. The Celtics scored 44 points in the first quarter only to shrink in the second half by scoring 44 points while going 1-for-15 from three and losing a 30-point blown lead -- the team's largest in the play-by-play era (since 1996-97). The 120-118 loss marked their undisputed most inexcusable defeat thus far.
"People think we never should lose and we was up a lot, and we kind of (expletive) the game up, and we know that," Tatum told reporters, per NBC Sports Boston. "We all adults and professionals and we all know we didn't do the things necessary to win. And I think that's sometimes easier to fix when you know if you do the right things and play the right way and how we supposed to, we know usually what the outcome's gonna be."
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Boston doesn't have much to play for in the tail-end of an overall dominant campaign, but succumbing to poor habits certainly isn't the way to go.
Featured image via Joe Camporeale/USA TODAY Sports Images
