MILWAUKEE -- Some days, nothing goes right. It’s the type of day where you want to get back into bed in the middle of the afternoon and just stay there.
I remember a day where I showed up to work wearing two different shoes. Those are not fun days, but at least they weren’t on national television for everyone to see.
Jayson Tatum had a very bad Saturday afternoon in Milwaukee. It was a very hard to explain performance in a very important game for the team.
“Today was just a one-off where I probably was thinking a little bit too much knowing that they give me a lot of attention,” Tatum said after the very tough two-point Game 3 loss. “Obviously I passed up some open looks that I should have -- that would have been best for the team. It led to some turnovers and things like that. ... I just got to make better reads and a lot of times it was for myself today that I passed up.”
Tatum has to toe a line between selfish and unselfish where, against a defense like Milwaukee’s the line of what to do can be blurred. In this game, Tatum crossed too far into the passing side of his game, giving up chances to take clean looks. In some ways, it’s a welcome development for Tatum to mess up by not shooting versus his early season (and early career) weakness of trying to iso and shoot too much.
“Take the shots that are there,” Ime Udoka said. “We do like those paint touches and him generating offense for others, but you have to get him going as well. I would say we talked about the setups and setting screens, which we did a lot better in Game 2 to free him up, but we’ll go take a look at it. … he had some open shots that he passed up. So nothing they did differently from Game 1 to 2, it's our execution wise on that end to free him up.”
On one hand, the Celtics can clearly expect Tatum to shrug this performance off. He is too good to have too many of these kinds of games, especially in the playoffs. On the other, there is no real room for this type of performance in the playoffs anymore.
The reasonable side of our brains understands that Tatum didn't come into this game intending to score 10 points on 21% shooting. No one would suggest Tatum has been cavalier about his job, so it’s easy to chalk it up as a very off night.
But the sports side of our brains believes in the magnificence of these athletes, and that “you have to be better” is a legitimate retort in an argument. This was Game 3, and now the team has to beat the Bucks three times in four tries? How can we give Tatum any kind of pass in this situation?
All Boston needed was a mediocre game from Tatum. Or, they just needed him to be himself for maybe three or four minutes in the fourth quarter; to dig down deep and have his ‘I know I suck today, but here’s three buckets in a row anyway and let’s run out of here like thieves in the night with a W’ moment.
They didn’t get it.
“You never want to lose, especially in the playoffs,” Tatum said. “We felt like we should have won. They played well, you’ve gotta give them credit. But I think that’s the frustrating part that, all things considered, we still had opportunities and came back and gave ourselves the chance to win the game. And we didn’t. And that’s tough.”
This is where chapters of a player’s story are written. That book on Tatum that will publish after his career ends (I should get started on that, actually) will be a compendium of his greatest moments, and the best of those are always heightened by responding to adversity.
Everyone loves a “he fell down, but he got back up” success story.
Tatum fell hard in Game 3. His team needed him to come through somehow and he couldn't do it. He needs to get back up in Game 4. The best players in a series don't always dominate every game, but they do bounce back. Legends get humbled, then they come back an do some humbling of their own.
This is what Tatum wants to be. So be it.
“Obviously, I expect to play better,” Tatum said. “I’m not going to make it about me or anything like that. I’ve gotta be better. I know that. My teammates know that. And I’m sure I will be. And we’ll make some adjustments and just be a little bit better on Monday.”
