![]() That all started in 2012, and continues to this day. I was always a card-carrying Boston sports fan before then, but until then I hadn’t begun the process of surgically replacing parts of my brain with thoughts about sports. Nine-year-old me rapidly had an existential crisis, realizing that this was deeply troubling to me. That’s because I can tell you the exact moment that I realized that I really cared about the fates of Boston sports teams: the fourth quarter of the 2012 Super Bowl, when it hit me that the Patriots were actually about to lose to the Giants. But I was 14 in 2017, and traditionally think about my sports fandom in two distinct eras: B.O. I can hear the rest of the CelticsBlog staff groaning in pain at that comment, because Tatum was drafted in 2017, which-if you’re keeping score-wasn’t really that long ago. Myself-and the entire next generation of Celtics fans-have a special relationship with Jayson Tatum, because he’s the first superstar whose entire development I can remember. (Brace yourself because I’m about to date myself, but not in the way people usually mean when they say they’re about to date themselves.) Merely repeating his last season would still be great for the Celtics, and at his age, it’s very hard to see him moving backwards. It’s possible Tatum’s counting stats look less impressive if Jaylen Brown and Kristaps Porzingis eat into his shot totals, but that hardly means he’s actually a worse player. Low-end prediction: Barring injury, any sort of regression for Tatum is very, very unlikely but not completely impossible. By April, Tatum is universally heralded as the premier wing in the NBA, not that he wasn’t already in the conversation. His defense goes from great to suffocating, along with more elaborate finishing moves in and around the painted area. Reasonable prediction: Tatum continues his tenure on the All-NBA First Team and adds additional levels of complexity to his already super-duper-mega star game. (takes a moment to savor the glory of that image) Tatum and Deuce hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy together and all of Celtics Nation melts from happiness overload. Tatum wins his first Most Valuable Player Award and is unequivocally the best player on the court in every playoff series. High-end prediction: Tatum goes nuclear, breaking some sort of scoring record and wresting control of the coveted “Everyone-Thinks-He’s-the-Best-Player-in-the-World” belt away from Nikola Jokic. ![]() Pretty good at basketball, but his real value to the Celtics is providing quality Deuce courtside content.
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