It’s been just about as positive a bounce-back season for Jayson Tatum as anyone around the Celtics could have asked for. He has become one of several primary options for a top-tier offense and has a compelling case for an All-Star berth in just his third season. But there is this one thing that just drives everyone crazy about someone whose most famous play is posterizing LeBron James: Why does Tatum struggle so much to convert near the rim?
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In November, Tatum shot just 51.9 percent at the rim, making him one of the league’s most inefficient high-volume scorers in the paint. In December? He was at 62.9 percent. Tatum, of course, is still developing, but he is starting to figure out how to use his moves and footwork to fit within his game and where the defense is positioned.
Tatum’s biggest crutch has been his tremendous reach, a double-jointed crane through the sky that usually allows him to get the release point of the ball to places the defender simply can’t reach. He has developed a tendency to jump early and reach out fully extended, trying to surprise the shot blocker when there isn’t room to take the more scenic route around the defender. But, of course, this is the NBA and you can’t just fool everyone whenever you want.
In the video above, both plays came over the Thanksgiving trip to New York, when Tatum scored 56 points in two games. The Celtics then hit the toughest stretch of their schedule and he seemed to recalibrate his attack, trying to figure out how he could be more patient with the ball when he entered the paint.
He started to implement the vital lesson Jaylen Brown has demonstrated in his fourth year, using a change of pace or even a complete stop to open up more controlled opportunities near the rim.
These subtle jump-stops put Tatum in a position to succeed in a few different ways. The first is in centering the body’s balance, putting more power and control behind the layup attempt. Furthermore, it slows the speed of movement down to make it much easier to gauge the touch off the backboard needed, something Tatum tends to overshoot on full-speed layups. In all likelihood, half of those full-speed misses will start going down as he gets better over the years, but the jump-stop method is a crucial tool for every wing scorer. Most importantly, it allows Tatum to position his body optimally to shield the defender away from the ball.
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He is filling in his build to become muscular and powerful, which has shown itself when he is able to lower a shoulder into a defender and make sure he gets the angle of approach he wants. But he still doesn’t seem to like taking torso and lower-body contact in the air. Those aerial collisions have been one of Brown’s greatest strengths since his second year in the league, further illustrating some of the contrasting characteristics to the two young wings’ game that makes them such an ideal complement long-term.
December was marked by erratic box scores for Tatum. He would oscillate between point totals in the mid-teens, 20s and 30s, cycling from meager to dominant scoring outings. Before his evisceration of Chicago’s infamously bewildered defense on Saturday, he looked lost and confused against Atlanta. His attempts to attack a mismatch with Trae Young caused by the Hawks’ switching defensive scheme showed how far he has come as much as it revealed how far he has to go to become an elite scorer.
In the first play of the video below, Tatum goes for one of his typical in-and-out drives to get past the defense. On these plays, he tries to slip around the first layer of rim protection up at the charge circle so he can use that grand reach to get a finger roll off the glass. This has him moving a bit out of control and trying to shoot the finger roll toward his left while his body is flying to the right. This is the perfect example of how keeping his dribble alive for an extra step and using his power to go into a jump stop will put him in a position to actually convert.
The second play shows Tatum trying to attack the Young mismatch with a spin move, which works in getting him past the much smaller point guard. But the problem is what do you do from there? Tatum managed to keep the ball alive for one dribble after the spin move, something most rookie-contract wings can’t pull off. But he can’t bring his feet all the way around to keep the play going and he has to throw up a circus shot that somehow goes in. Perhaps a year or two from now, Tatum will be able to maintain his balance and go right into the center’s body to draw a foul.
And that is the true question: whether he will become a foul-drawing machine. While he still prefers to just take contact on his shoulders and arms, he every so often will show the assertiveness to try to dunk it on someone’s head and leave himself exposed to drawing the body foul. It’s a play that is just so easy for someone who has physical dimensions and skills close to that of an elite finisher like Paul George.
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George continuously bulked up over the years and developed a taste for contact that made him an MVP-caliber player once he left Indiana. That seems like a plausible path to project for Tatum, but the improvement there has been more incremental and inconsistent than every other part of his offensive repertoire. The upside is the progress has been visible even this season, and the pressure to be reliable stems less from the team’s needs and more from holding himself to a high standard.
He is in the right environment to grow playing next to Brown and Gordon Hayward, whose greatest skill is balance and control in the paint. But he’s going to have to fall in love with throwing himself into the defender if he’s going to reach the heights he wants to achieve.
(Photo: Jeremy Brevard / USA Today)
