If you only glanced at the far-right column of Thursday’s box score, you’d think it was an unremarkable night for Jayson Tatum.
The Celtics star scored just 15 points on 5-of-13 shooting in Boston’s 124-104 bulldozing of the Philadelphia 76ers, tied for his lowest total of the season. Four Celtics scored more, with Payton Pritchard leading the way with 28 points off the bench.
But Tatum was far from a passenger. He controlled the tempo of the game with his passing, manipulating Philly’s defense by drawing attention and then finding open teammates. His assists produced 12 Celtics points in the second quarter alone, then eight more in the third as Boston broke the game open.
By the time head coach Joe Mazzulla pulled most of his starters early in the fourth quarter, Tatum had compiled his second triple-double of the season and fourth of his career: 15 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists in 35 minutes.
“Him being a playmaker is big for us,” Mazzulla told reporters postgame.
Playmaking for others wasn’t always a strength of Tatum’s game. In his first three years in the NBA, he didn’t have a single regular-season game with double-digit assists. He had three during the 2020-21 season, then two, two and one over the last three campaigns. He already has six this season with 26 games still to play, including three in his last eight contests.
It’s a trend that began during last year’s playoffs, when Tatum struggled as a shooter but excelled as a facilitator. He averaged 6.3 assists per game during Boston’s championship run and hit double digits three times, including twice in the NBA Finals against Dallas. His 5.7 assists per game so far this season would easily top his previous career high of 4.7.
And he’s done that while remaining, on most nights, an elite scorer. Only Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokic and Anthony Edwards have scored more points than Tatum this season, and only six players (those three, plus Giannis Antetokounmpo, Tyrese Maxey and Kevin Durant) are averaging more points per game.
Constant improvement, Tatum said after Thursday’s win, is a priority for the six-time All-Star. Still a relatively young player at 26, his goal is to be regarded as one of the NBA’s premier talents and, ambitiously, to sit alongside Larry Bird in the pantheon of all-time Celtics greats.
“Since I got in the league, (I’m) just trying to get better every single year,” Tatum told reporters. “I’m very accomplished at a young age, but the truth is I envision myself as one of those guys — you know, the LeBron (James), the Steph (Curry), the KDs. I want the next generation to view me as that. Wearing a Celtics uniform comes with a lot of pride, and the best Celtic ever is Larry Bird. Even if I never reach that — maybe I do, maybe I don’t — you aspire to chase that guy. It comes with a level of focus and motivation every day to be the best you can, and wherever the chips fall, just knowing that you gave it your all, you can be OK with that.”
Comparing Tatum’s current resume to Bird’s is tricky (the latter’s age-26 season was his fourth in the NBA; this is Tatum’s eighth) but Tatum would need to win multiple titles and at least a couple of NBA MVP Awards to even enter that conversation. He’s also nowhere close to Bird’s career total of 59 triple-doubles.
But it’s not a wholly unrealistic target for Tatum, who already ranks in the top 10 in Celtics history in points scored, likely is on track for his fourth straight first-team All-NBA nod and should, barring injury, have close to a decade of high-level play still in front of him.
“I think you realize at a certain point that you might be on a trajectory of, whatever people want to call it, having a legendary career, an all-time great or whatever,” Tatum told reporters. “You see the impact that (Bird) had on the game of basketball and obviously with the Celtics, winning three championships, three MVPs in a row, it was just incredible. You just suddenly start to see that — we both score 60 points in a game and you start to get mentioned in ‘the only other Celtic to do this.’ And then obviously, once you win a championship, it’s like, all right, you can be in those rooms with the Celtics legends.
“But it doesn’t just stop at one. You’ve obviously got to win multiple, and that’s what we’re trying to do. And I always want to be the best. He’s, in my opinion, the best Celtic ever. He did it the right way, and he’s a great guy to chase in a sense.”
The Celtics trail the first-place Cleveland Cavaliers by 5 1/2 games in the Eastern Conference but have played some of their best basketball of the season of late. After navigating a prolonged slump that stretched from mid-December to late January, Boston has won eight of its last nine and will carry a four-game win streak into its Sunday afternoon matchup with the New York Knicks at TD Garden.