Jayson Tatum’s Offseason Adjustment Made Bold Precedent Vs. Knicks

Jayson Tatum’s offseason tour of disrespect could be traced back to last season’s NBA playoffs. Despite leading the Boston Celtics in points, rebounds and assists throughout the Finals, the 26-year-old wasn’t named MVP for one glaring reason: shooting woes.

Tatum shot 42.7% from the field against the Dallas Mavericks, but the 3-point shot wasn’t falling (28.3%) at all. Even when Tatum moved past the Finals, drenched himself in celebratory champagne and dusted confetti off his shoulder after Boston’s two-mile-long duck boat parade, the woes still followed the five-time All-Star.

Joining USA Basketball in Paris for the 2024 Olympic Games, Tatum’s perimeter struggles were examined thoroughly under a microscope by head coach Steve Kerr. Tatum shot 38.1% from the floor in 17.7 minutes and logged two DNPs, but after being handed his championship ring and watching Banner 18 reach the rafters, a rapid change occurred for the better — and it drained New York.

“Shot felt good,” Tatum said after Boston’s 132-109 win. “I was in a good rhythm and things like that, and I think offensively we just kind of picked up where we left off last year. We brought almost everybody back. We play to our strengths. We know what we’re trying to do. We know who we’re trying to attack. We know what sets and actions to get in and we work on it all the time. We work on reads every single day in practice and that’s essentially all we do. Yeah, we got plays and things but we just make reads.”

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Boston facilitated to a level that put the Celtics on a tier of their own to begin the season. Through screens and constant ball movement searching for the right shot, Tatum was gifted a handful of quality looks as he scored a game-high 37 points on a red-hot 14-of-18 shooting from the field. Tatum drained eight of Boston’s record-tying 29 threes — matching the Milwaukee Bucks (2020) — and did it all in three quarters as Mazzulla yanked him from the floor at the start of the fourth frame.

Deflecting the verbal punches that followed Tatum from the United States to Paris made the offseason that much longer. Tatum previously noted that in his mind, the disrespectful discourse made Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla the “happiest person in the world,” which Mazulla himself confirmed during training camp.

“I expect him to just stay right here and just continue to work on his game, continue to get better,” Mazzulla said postgame. “I’m proud of obviously the way he shot the ball but more just how he dominated the game in all the areas, and picked his spots very well, took the shots that he wanted. But the guy just works hard every day, doesn’t allow things to get in the way of what’s most important, and that kind of showed tonight. I expect him to have a great season.”

There’s no doubt when looking back at rookie Tatum, you’ll catch a noticeable difference. Tatum doesn’t rely on the side-step 3-point shot or creating space with fancy ISO basketball nearly as frequently — which created a handful of highly-contested looks. The shooting splits, as Tatum’s normalized a more conservative approach, has seen its highs and lows in recent years amid his development.

Tatum was a 40.1% shooter from three through his first three years in the league (on 4.5 attempts). That efficiency has taken a dip down to 36.4% from three in the past four seasons (on 8.4 attempts), even though it hasn’t anchored Tatum’s ability to be Boston’s leading scorer throughout it all.

“Watched a lot of film. Been working with my trainer, Drew (Hanlen), a lot recently in the last few weeks,” Tatum said at last month’s media day at Auerbach Center. “A few mechanical things — pick up points, hand placement, getting lower, keeping my shoulders forward and things like that. There’s some things I could’ve fixed but just in the midst of the playoffs and trying to manage your rest and things like that, it’s a little tough. I was still playing well, I just wasn’t shooting the ball as well as I would’ve liked. Obviously, we were winning so it wasn’t the time or the place to try to fix things in that moment.”

Tatum’s never been the most vocally outgoing player on the floor, but his 37-point, 10-assist double-double spoke for itself — and loudly.