No one wants to hear about the grind of the NBA because your grind is pretty tough and you do it for a lot less money. These guys don’t have to sit in traffic, get belittled by a middle manager with an inferiority complex, or feel a pit in their stomach after seeing just how much money went out the door when the bills came due.
But the physical toll is real. And getting into a hotel room at 3 a.m., no matter how nice it is, after a 600-mile flight, no matter how much legroom the charter offers, still makes a back-to-back game tough.
Muscles get sore. Tendons are inflamed. Lactic acid builds. Moods sour.
When Marcus Smart went for a rebound late in the game, he could barely get off the floor, and the ball careened off him out of bounds. He drooped over, arms limp and swaying like someone cut the strings off a marionette, and came up screaming "Ahhhh! I ain't got no f’ing bounce."
It didn’t seem like anyone had any bounce in the first half. The Celtics shot 41.3% from the field and 30.4% from 3. The best offense in the league was sputtering against the worst defense. Shots front-rimmed all night. The game was gross.
I don’t know if Jayson Tatum took a power nap, had a coffee, or listened to one of those songs that makes you want to fight someone (“Killing In the Name” by Rage Against The Machine does it for me), but the guy who came out of that locker room in the second half was just different.
After a 15-point first half on 41.7% shooting, he put up a 15-point third quarter on 62.5% shooting. When the plucky Pistons threatened Boston’s five-game winning streak, Tatum decided he wasn’t going to let that happen. The only thing that slowed him down was a bathroom break in the middle of it all.
“Just kind of tried to turn it into another gear,” Tatum said. “First half was kind of back and forth … coming into the second and a half, we needed to play better. Stop trading buckets and stop going back and forth and figure out a way to win.”
Tatum is having his best start to any season he’s ever had. He’s averaging 32.3 ppg on 50% shooting and 38.7% from 3. Last November, he shot 39%, 33.6% from 3, and averaged 23.3 points per game. The previous season was the short-turnaround season that started in December, and he was off to decent start before he caught COVID. The November before that, he was at 42.1%, 31.3%, 20.3 ppg.
“It's definitely the best I felt to ever start a season,” Tatum said. “It kind of feels like how I felt I was playing towards the end of last season … it feels great to start a season like this, because I definitely know what it feels like to be on the other side of .500, struggling shooting the ball … the way we’re playing, it’s fun, and it feels good doing it.”
Tatum is now sixth in the NBA in points per game and first overall with 420 total points. Only Luka Doncic joins him with more than 400 points. But more than that Tatum has turned a corner. At 24 years old, Tatum has reached another level in his career.
The first few seasons have been part of his own personal discovery. He mimicked his idol Kobe Bryant for a while until he worked through the parts that worked and didn’t for him, eventually crafting his own style on the floor.
It’s no different than any creator, be it a writer, performer, or even a chef. Everyone starts out with a hero, everyone pretends to be that hero, and eventually everyone realizes they can’t be an exact facsimile of that person. That person has something unique that produced something great, and to fully realize their new potential, the idolizer has to be open to being unique in their own right.
Tatum now exudes power in what used to be a strictly finesse game. Tatum now dictates to the defense where he will go, rather than just simply ‘take what the defense gives him.’ Sure, the way the defense reacts will shape Tatum’s reaction, but his distance from Point A to Point B has shortened considerably this season. He is taking his route when he wants to take his route.
On a Saturday night, in a Detroit pizza shop disguised as a basketball court, it was Tatum doing the eating on the floor when the Celtics were starving for someone to take over.
“In a way these are kind of like the more fun games,” Tatum said. “You play in the NBA long enough there's gonna be some weird days like this where we’re down a bunch of guys … those are the fun ones in the sense. … Joe was talking about it at halftime. Just figure it out. Find a way to win the game. And we did, and everybody played a part, and those are the fun ones.”
