NEW YORK — Jayson Tatum couldn’t help but acknowledge the full circle moment.
Six years ago, a 19-year-old Tatum was sitting inside Barclays Center on draft night and didn’t know what to expect. He was selected No. 3 overall by the Celtics. On Saturday night, he revealed he was wary about it.
“I didn’t even want to come because I didn’t think I was going to play,” Tatum said. “They had Gordon (Hayward), (Jaylen Brown), Isaiah Thomas and (Marcus) Smart and I didn’t think I was good enough to be on that team.”
That’s wild to hear now.
Six years later, Tatum sat at a podium inside the same building he was drafted in trying to process it all. He had just become the youngest player in Celtics history to reach 10,000 career points in their win over the Nets. His mom and grandma were in the crowd, a pro-Celtics contingent that was showering “MVP” chants when Tatum stepped to the free throw line.
Tatum isn’t just good enough to be on the team. He’s a superstar on a championship favorite and tracking to be one of the greats of the game.
Six years went by rather quickly.
“Time has gone by fast and just trying to stay present, stay in the moment and enjoy it,” Tatum said. “Ten-thousand points sounds crazy to just think about. I always think about when I was a kid growing up with my mom and saying I wanted to be in the NBA. I may have thought I would be one of the best players, but to actually do it is a surreal feeling.”
Tatum was in a reflective mood on Saturday. This summer, he revealed in an interview with The Messenger that he has started to feel a deeper connection to Boston over the last couple of years, which has lined up with his ascent as one of the NBA’s best players and leading the Celtics on deep playoff runs.
It’s no coincidence. As milestones like Saturday pile up, and he plays more years in Boston where he has an opportunity to win a championship, he’ll continue to become more beloved. He has noticed a shift in how the city views him. This week, he was greeted with a hero’s welcome when he surprised kids at New Mission High School in Hyde Park.
Once a shy teenager from St. Louis with no ties to Boston, Tatum has started to embrace his status in his adopted city that he’s calling his own.
“I’ve really felt that connection with the city of Boston. When I said that, I meant the people. The people that I know and the people I don’t know, the people I see at the gas station, and doing things more like that,” Tatum said. “Going to the children’s hospital, surprising the kids at the high school, and seeing those genuine reactions of the excitement on their face when I walked in. That brought me joy. I was happy to be there. I understand the value in that, to come in there and speak to them, and that might be something they remember forever. So doing more things like that, and enjoying my time here, appreciating the people in the city of Boston. It’s a great place. …
“It’s a weird transition,” Tatum continued. “You get drafted, they pick you to come here. It’s different. Like I picked what high school I wanted to go to, I picked I wanted to go to Duke, so I’ve always kind of been a St. Louis kid, that’s where I grew up and that’s just where I felt comfortable. So, being 19, it was an adjustment. But you realize, my son was born in Boston. I bought my first house, my car, my mom lives in Boston. I’ve spent almost a third of my life, so you really start to think about all those things and the relationships that I’ve built in the organization and people outside just in the city. You really start to feel like you’re a part of something.”
Both in the city and on the court, Tatum has come into his own. But he’ll be the first to say the job isn’t close to complete. In order to be truly beloved in a city like Boston, he has to deliver a championship.
Tatum, as Saturday’s milestone indicates, has cemented himself as one of the elite scorers in the game. But his journey to a championship demands evolution into becoming a complete playmaker. One who can lead the Celtics to wins that require him to close at an elite level. To know when the right times are to score and make plays for others.
Slowly but surely, Tatum is looking like he’s ready for that next step that will take the Celtics to the next level. He showed it Saturday as he led the C’s late.
“It’s just all about reading a game, right?” Tatum said. “I hit two threes, I got the layup, technical foul, hit the free throw, I got it going. Everybody, they knew that. Part of the game is just being able to make plays and that varies from possession to possession. That’s what the best of the best players do.
“When it’s time to make a play for yourself and, and score for the team, they do that. And when they start hitting and coming to blitz, making the right reads, so we get the two on ones behind them, you gotta do that as well.”
Time will tell if Tatum ultimately has what it takes to perform at a level that delivers Boston a championship. But if he keeps evolving like this, there’s no reason to believe he won’t.
“He shows up to work every single day. He puts the work in, he dedicates his life to it,” C’s coach Joe Mazzulla said. “He doesn’t miss days, he doesn’t miss practices, games and just his open mindedness and wanting to be coached and wanting to be held to a high standard. When you have guys like that that you can coach, you see what you get out of him, but it also allows you to bring the best out of everybody else.
“And so he’s one of the guys that sets the tone for us because he’s willing to be pushed to the ultimate limit, that allows us to do that to everybody. But I’m really proud of him. And I know he’s not going to stop.”
