The Case for Jayson Tatum
The third* best player in the league
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Remove Jayson Tatum’s name from your mind and reflect upon the following career accomplishments: High school All-American, collegiate superstar, top-3 draft pick, 6-time All-Star, soon to be 5-time All-NBA, 2-time Olympic gold medalist, and NBA champion. Given Tatum's lowkey nature, you can be forgiven for taking his career for granted. You can’t deny his accomplishments.
Having barely turned 27, Tatum is fully immersed in his prime years while managing to continue improving his game. Numbers are insanely cheap in this period of inflated offensive production, but 27 points, 8.7 rebounds, and 6 assists per game translate across any era. More than stats, what Tatum has unlocked this season is a complete understanding of when, where, why, and how to impact a game.
It’s a measure of how consistently excellent Tatum has been throughout his career that it’s debatable whether this has been his best overall season. Statistically, maybe not. As a franchise player on a championship contender, I’d argue it’s been his most complete campaign to date. Nevertheless, Tatum’s 2024-25 season will likely end with the highest MVP finish of his career, even if that winds up being a distant third behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Nikola Jokic.
It’s strange that a player so gifted and magnetic on the court has failed to make much of a connection with the greater basketball-watching populace. Perhaps it's Tatum’s understated manner that throws cold water on the debate. Back in February, during an interview with Michael Lee of the Washington Post, Tatum was asked if he’d like to be considered one of the faces of the league. “What I bring to the game, on and off the court, I guess fits the criteria,” he told Lee, not all that convincingly.
Perhaps the issue is that from the very beginning of his career, all Tatum has known as an NBA player is winning. Thanks to the genius of Danny Ainge’s rebuilding plan, and the gullibility of several former general managers, Tatum was drafted into an ideal situation with a franchise that had no intention of subjecting its budding young star to a painful rebuilding process.
With veteran players already in key spots, Tatum was allowed to grow into his game with the patience and grace that too often eludes other young stars. To the surprise of no one, he excelled in exactly the manner everyone expected he would. There was no existential crisis for Tatum to overcome, no hero’s journey for him to undertake. He was supposed to be the kind of player capable of leading a franchise to championship contention, which is exactly what he’s become.
Even though it took seven years and several frustrating postseason losses to reach the mountain top, when Tatum finally broke through last season it felt inevitable. That’s not his fault, but it is his burden in an NBA ecosystem that has never truly embraced his all-too logical rise from engaging prospect to top-5 performer.
It’s only in comparison with the other MVP candidates where Tatum’s casual brand of excellence fails to distinguish itself. No matter how good he gets – and he’s been even better than you might think this season – Tatum’s game doesn’t break any new stylistic ground. He’s a big forward who controls the game with an enviable combination of skill, size, athleticism, and intelligence. Once upon a time, Elgin Baylor and Connie Hawkins did the same. LeBron James has done so forever.
With Tatum, there’s a sense of, We’ve seen something like this before. Just look within the claustrophobic confines of his own storied franchise where before Tatum there was Paul Pierce, and before the Truth, there was Larry Bird.
As good as he is, Tatum is not singular like Jokic, a player so rare even longtime observers are at a loss to find a suitable doppelganger. Bill Walton with better feet? Insufficient, especially when you consider Joker’s offensive brilliance and Walton’s defensive acumen are the alpha and omega hovering over this comparison. Only prime Arvydas Sabonis comes close, and he was always more myth than man before finally arriving in the States.
I suspect Jokic is the “most valuable player” in the league, just as he has been for the last 5-6 years. I equally suspect that he will not win the award because of the presence of Gilgeous-Alexander, a wonderful two-way player who will likely win MVP in part because of his newness on the scene. That takes nothing away from SGA, who would be my second choice on a hypothetical ballot behind Jokic.
If SGA and Jokic are the clear 1-2 in the MVP conversation, Tatum and Giannis Antetokounmpo are solidly in the 3-4 range. (Quick show of hands: How many people would trade Tatum for Luka Doncic? I wouldn’t, but you know who you are.)
The argument for Giannis is that his numbers are superior to Tatum’s. Given that he has to carry more of a burden for a Bucks team that is slowly sinking under the weight of its previous glory, Giannis is being asked to do more with less. Lately it feels like he’s being asked to do a lot more.
The argument for Tatum is that he is asked to do more with more. For Tatum, individual numbers have been less important than boosting his team’s chances of repeating as champions. That means taking his game to the next level while simultaneously keeping everyone else happy and engaged. It’s a nifty trick, more difficult than it looks in part because Tatum makes everything look so seamless.
*And now that we’ve reached the logical end game, we’re left with a hypothetical containing no wrong answers. Whether you roll with Tatum or Giannis for third place, neither of them is winning MVP this year. It’s all semantics. The fact that Tatum did not use this season as a springboard for individual glory says more about him and his priorities than any of the nonsensical debates making the rounds.
One of the worst aspects of modern NBA discourse is the rush to judge players based on the latest thing that happened in their careers up to this point. Tatum has been so good for so long and is still somehow just getting started. More than most, his impact will eventually need to be assessed through the long arc of history.
In the end, Tatum will be judged like all great Celtics are ultimately judged: by championships more than MVPs. He’s got one. Chances are, no one will be taking his game for granted if he gets another this spring.