The Tatum-Brown Juxtaposition
If the Celtics have been consistent in any facet the last five years, it’s in their ability to foster questions surrounding their centerpiece wings.
Can Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown continue to coexist in Boston?
Would Boston trade Jaylen Brown?
Who is the Celtics’ no. 1 option?
Would you rather have Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown?
Is Jayson Tatum good enough to carry the Celtics?
If the Celtics have been consistent in any facet the last five years, it’s in their ability to foster questions surrounding their centerpiece wings. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are two great basketball players with many overlapping skills — both can score at all three levels and get to 25 points any given night, both could be tasked with guarding an opponent’s best perimeter player, both have some decent playmaking chops, and both could be the guy on a playoff team that runs deep into the postseason.
It’s that last part that has caused the most dissension. On the surface, Tatum has all of the makings of a classic no. 1 option scoring forward. It was Tatum who made The Leap in his third season from promising young player to bonafide superstar. Meanwhile, Brown’s career has been a slow burn — he’s raised his scoring average by a whopping 18 points per game between his first and fifth seasons in the league. His noticeable year-by-year progression has groomed him into a worthy top dog. Brown has earned his way into Tatum’s stratosphere.
Boston has one of the best problems an NBA team could have: They’ve drafted two stars, but both are overqualified to be no. 2 options. A simple answer would be to trade one of the two — according to a report from Bleacher Report’s Jake Fischer, rival executives believe Boston would look into breaking up their star duo this upcoming offseason — but there are no simple answers in NBA roster construction. It’s become imperative to roster players who can make open shots, dribble comfortably on the perimeter, defend their position at a neutral level or better, and create their own offense in a pinch. Successful teams have as many of these guys as possible, and bad teams only have one or two. It’s why the Suns and Pistons find themselves with the best and worst records in the league — Phoenix has eight guys who can create offense at a high level (plus JaVale McGee to catch lobs), and Detroit may only have two.
The 2017-18 Celtics had eight guys who fit this mold: young Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, Kyrie Irving, Gordon Hayward, Terry Rozier, Marcus Smart, Al Horford, and Marcus Morris. They lost Hayward and Irving before the Conference Finals and still pushed the top-heavy Cavaliers to seven games. Today’s Celtics boast older, slower versions of Smart and Horford, plus Dennis Schröder, Robert Williams and Josh Richardson as creators alongside Tatum and Brown. That’s… not a great supporting cast, and the Celtics wake up this morning with a 15-15 record to confirm it.
Hypothetically, Boston should be trying to add more guys with overlapping qualities to Tatum and Brown, not less. They’ve got several tradable contracts in Schröder, Richardson, and Smart — but those are already the only impactful perimeter players on the team. It’s here where we realize just how awful the Celtics have been at drafting over the past several years. In 2020, the Celtics drafted Aaron Nesmith over Saddiq Bey and Tyrese Maxey, and traded Desmond Bane away. In 2019, the Celtics traded away the pick that became Matisse Thybulle. That’s three extra young guys who could be important pieces on this team.
Let’s get into fantasyland for a second. In an ideal world, Tatum and Brown would be flanked by an unselfish point guard of the Ricky Rubio-Lonzo Ball variety — initiators whose first thought is to kick the ball ahead but are capable of scoring when the opportunity arises. The Celtics already have Robert Williams, who is the cheap, jumpy big playing the center position with a Warriors-style diet of lob-catching and clean-up buckets. A pace-setting backup guard, a spark plug scorer, and some big-body forwards — those would be nice. The rest of the roster should be a bunch of 6’4-or-taller defenders who can make some open threes and not piss their pants when they have to dribble.
Whether or not Boston has the means to fix their roster… Well, we could go on for days with fake trades that could get the Celtics out of this position. As Tatum and Brown have progressed into two-way stars, the roster around them has regressed to mediocrity. Concerns have arisen about a lack of leadership among Tatum and Brown, but no amount of leadership can bring back Gordon Hayward or undo the Desmond Bane trade. Also, these dudes have played with Marcus Smart for their entire career.
As I mentioned earlier, having two stars who could both be the no. 1 option is just about the best problem an NBA team could face. We could get into the differences between the two, such as Brown being a slightly better defender, Tatum becoming inefficient and settling for jumpers — but it feels like nitpicking. The Celtics don’t want to choose between their two stars because they don’t have to.
If we are going to juxtapose Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum — two awesome do-it-all wings who have never shown any disdain for each other or their city — we need to ask questions about the world the Celtics have created around their stars first.