Jayson Tatum Needs to Separate Himself as 2nd Scoring Option

The Boston Celtics can look to Jayson Tatum to bounce back from this brutal stretch

The Boston Celtics could not put an end to their struggles with a win against the Washington Wizards on Christmas day. They played a solid game for three and a half quarters, then very uncharacteristically fell apart during the last six and a half minutes, handing the win to a Wizards team that did a lot more to earn it.

When you look back on this stretch, there are a lot of problems that need to be addressed. Brad Stevens cannot wait to get back to practicing, so that he can make some of the changes that are clearly needed.

For as awful as this stretch has been, there is still one player everyone can look to in order to get back to winning on a consistent basis. His best performance might have been against the Wizards, but if this stretch has taught us anything it is that Jayson Tatum needs to be more involved on offense, and he needs to be taking more shots every game.

Everyone knows that Kyrie Irving is the main offensive option, and that is not going to change. He is scoring at career high efficiency, and has proven that he can carry any kind of load that is needed as a scorer. He is able to score any way he wants, and there really is no one else in the league that can match what he does.

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The Celtics also know that Al Horford is going to be one of the most dynamic bigs in the league. He is shooting over 50 percent overall and over 40 percent from three, making him the most reliable shooting big in the league, to go along with his 5.4 assists per game, which is the most by any center.

The Celtics know what they are going to get from Horford, and they know he will be as important as anyone on this team as a facilitator. The problem is that Horford is not always going to be the reliable second scoring option. In fact, nobody has separated themselves as the clear cut second scoring option, and it is time for that to change.

We are now past the point where we can say Tatum’s freakish efficiency is a fluke. He is maintaining everything at an incredible rate, and he is doing it no matter what Stevens is asking of him. The only problem continues to be that he is not a team leader in shot attempts.

When you look at what Tatum does as a 50 percent three point shooter, a dynamic and explosive finisher at the rim, with a deadly mid range isolation attack, there are no limits to what he has been able to do.

The Celtics know they need to build from this recent stretch, and one thing they need to take is the fact that Tatum needs to be the second most important scorer on this team, and Irving is the only player that should be taking more shots.

The Celtics do not want Horford to threaten his play making, and that will hold back his scoring. Jaylen Brown is too inconsistent to trust at this point, and there is not much reliable offense after that. Tatum is proving that he is on another level as a scorer than these other options, and getting some practice time will hopefully lead to Tatum being more involved and more aggressive.

Stevens is always patient with his rookies and this will always be a process. Tatum is not going to be thrust into a role that Stevens is not fully confident he can handle. So far, there is nothing That Tatum has not bee able to handle, and he is one of the most exciting players in the league when he is out there making plays.

It may take a bit of time before he separates himself from the other secondary scorers on the team, but that is where the team needs to be progressing towards. Getting Tatum more involved could be the most important thing to come out of this bad stretch, because his efficiency in a small sample has made it impossible to know how much of a ceiling he could actually have.

Stevens will take it one step at a time, but Tatum needs to make sure that he is never hesitating. He needs to embrace the kind of aggression that much less talented offensive players have. It would be absurd for him to maintain this efficiency with an increase in volume, but getting that extra volume is the only way to know exactly how much damage he can do.

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The Celtics have a lot of work to do and we should see some significant adjustments after this stretch. Tatum should be a focus in all these adjustments because he might have been the best part of this team during this stretch, and certainly has more room to improve than anyone else on the team this season.