The Celtics aren’t winning no title with this pathetic version of Tatum. I think this is just who he is he’ll give you an amazing game and drop a 40 50 piece but he’ll follow it up with stinkers. He’ll also go a bunch of stretches where he just looks awful.
This game shouldn’t be 10 should be up way more
To be fair, he's actually been pretty consistent in the playoffs so far. Almost every night he's had somewhere in the realm of 20-25 points, 9-11 rebounds and 4-7 assists and between 25%-30% from three (eek).
He hasn't really had any monster games thus far, but hasn't had any real extreme stinkers either.
I think he's recognised that if they are going to win they need to do it as a team, not with him taking 40 ISO shots. He's still taking some bad ISO shots but at least he's not doing it 15 times a night. He is taking way too many threes though.
I've noticed with Tatum there's a visiable inconsistency with his jumper. When he rises and releases the shot in one fluid motion he makes it pretty much every time. When he goes up in what feels like a "two stage" jumper (i.e. visible delay between elevation and release) he misses almost always.
I don't think JT has been bad, just solid as in the bolded above. He just took a couple quick 3s and had one dumb ISO it all possession play where he got mad he didn't score and then had a dumb foul. He got a lot of boards, moved the ball well for part of the game, he is working well as the decoy to get JB going.
I mean, that's the thing, though - we haven't needed him to be scoring big. He's doing all of the other things really well - defense, rebounding, playmaking for others, etc. When he does start looking more for his own shot is when he's not done as well and stalled the offense.
The coaches need to sit him down and just straight up tell him that if they're going to continue to guard us like this, then he doesn't need to worry as much about his own scoring. We have so much offensive talent and shooting on this team - even without KP - that we can burn teams when they sell out their defense to limit Tatum. And, in fact, continuing to exploit that defense over and over will be the quickest way for them to adjust and give Tatum more room to operate offensively, eventually.
Topic: Cavaliers (0-0) at Celtics (0-0) Eastern Conference Semifinals Game 1 5/7/24 (Read 13406 times)