Karalis: Jayson Tatum is bad at isolation basketball, and he needs to stop

The loss to the Charlotte Hornets drove home an important point for the Boston Celtics. 

While the Celtics looked sluggish and out of sorts, relying on individual talent and isolation basketball to power through a tough game, the Hornets looked spry and hungry, using passes to dice through the Celtics defense like a late-night Slap Chop infomercial. 

The passing numbers were so gruesome, this next paragraph should come with a parental warning: explicit statistics label. 

Charlotte threw 311 passes to Boston’s 255. Not only did the Hornets out-assist Boston 39-18, they out potential-assisted them 55-42. Charlotte’s assists created 101 points while Boston’s created 55.

And while you might think the point proven here is that moving the ball is the key to good offense, that’s actually not where I was going with this. Yes, watching the Hornets whip the ball around, drive, and kick their way to a good win did actually stir some jealousy in Celtics fans who wished their team could do that more consistently, but we always knew that’s how Brad Stevens wanted to play. I wouldn’t be surprised if he just showed the team clips of the Hornets’ ball movement in today’s film session and said “do this!” 

No, the point that game proved more than anything is that not only do the Celtics often rely too much on isolation basketball. It’s that they’re really bad at it. 

The Celtics two main guys, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown (mostly Tatum), often default to solo forays when the going gets tough or when they feel too sluggish to move like Charlotte did. They are also not good at that style of basketball, despite what their incredibly high level of talent or young All-Star egos may suggest.   

The Hornets are this year’s “prove you wrong” team. Last year it was the Memphis Grizzlies. The year before, it was the Sacramento Kings. They are the young, low-expectations team that comes out for most games with chips on their shoulders and just enough talent that if they maximize it by playing how they did Sunday and they face an opponent lagging in any way, they’ll come out on top. 

Terry Rozier is playing this year’s role of fearless clutch time maniac, LaMelo Ball was, before he got hurt, the hot, brash rookie. Gordon Hayward, before he got hurt, was the steadying veteran. 

It works right now. They have just enough attitude to not give a crap who they face but not so much cockiness that anyone thinks they can do it themselves. It’s the perfect overachievement formula. 

Boston has top-end All-Star talent that also gets what it takes to win, but also has grown so supremely confident in their skills that they feel like they can take over whenever they want. They have a team that has been built in such a way that they rely on their two young stars to do yeoman’s work, which fuels the feeling that it’s ok if the scoring comes at the expense of doing all the other work necessary leading up to it. 

And I get it. This has been a long season that has hit Boston hard. Charlotte had a lot more time off to have an actual offseason. There are a ton of valid reasons why the Celtics have been impacted more negatively than most teams this season. Doing all the extra work of passing and moving the ball is much harder than getting the ball, surveying the floor, and either asking for a pick or just making an individual move to try to get to the basket. 

The Hornets moved so much on Sunday that they collectively ran nearly an extra mile more than Boston. Charlotte’s average speed in the game was 4.32 miles per hour while Boston’s was 4.12.

Ball movement takes work. Isolating is easier. 

But Tatum and Brown are not good isolation players. They sometimes make nice plays in isolation, and sometimes, especially come playoff time, they’ll be forced into that a lot more as the defenses improve. However, the numbers are pretty stark. 

Tatum especially seems to fancy himself as an isolation player, but the numbers have rarely backed him up.  

He is 10th in the NBA in isolation frequency this season, going one-on-one 18.5% of the time. He’s averaging .81 points per possession (PPP), which ranks him 136th. He shoots 34.1% on isolation plays, good for 154th. 

Oh by the way, that’s 6.6% worse than Marcus Smart. Tatum isolates more than anyone on the Celtics, but Jeff Teague scored 1.05 PPP and had a field goal percentage of 51.7%. 

Tatum is in the 38th percentile this season on isolation plays, a massive regression from last season when he was in the 75th percentile. However, last season was his only decent season in isolation plays. He went iso 15.8% of the time, which was 12th in the NBA. His 1.00 PPP was good for 50th in the league, but he was still 100th in field goal percentage (40.8%).   

Why was he so much better in isolation plays last year? Probably because he had Daniel Theis sealing guys in the lane and opening up clearer paths to the basket for Tatum. That play has gone away this year, as has Tatum’s ability to snake his way to the rim off pick-and-rolls. 

That leaves him choosing more floaters, fadeaways, and side-step shots, many from the mid-range. He’s taking 20.3 of his shots from the mid-range this year, up from 16.8% last year. 

Brown isolates much less, which is good because he is worse at it. He isolates 6.8% of the time and averages .73 PPP this season while shooting 35.8%. It’s a slight step back from last year, which is good. He should do it less. 

Isolation ball is the worst thing the Boston Celtics can lean on in tough times. Sunday’s game showed us all we need to know, in stark contrast, about how to play basketball and put pressure on the other team’s defense. 

Every time the Celtics try to win games with isolation basketball, they just end up falling apart. Tatum is an amazing basketball talent who can make teams pay when they make the slightest mistakes. And sure, when there are clear mismatches, it’s a chance for Tatum to go one-on-one and take advantage of them. 

However, that can’t be his first option. That point was made clear on Sunday. Hopefully he gets that message.