Boston Celtics: Jayson Tatum playing like a legitimate MVP candidate

Since the start of the new year, the Boston Celtics have found themselves moseying right on up the conference standings, and, currently, find themselves boasting a stellar 41-27 record overall, good enough for the fifth-best mark out east.

Now, while the C’s 2022 successes are truly a testimony to just how well the team as a collective has managed to play, leading the charge for their midseason turnaround has been franchise cornerstone, Jayson Tatum.

At the beginning of the year, we saw the 24-year-old struggling mightily with his efficiency, particularly in the scoring department, which, as a result, aided considerably in Boston’s sub-.500 level of play through the first couple of months of action.

However, since the calendar page turned to January, the young stud has seemingly flipped a switch and, in turn, has found himself playing some of the best basketball of his entire career.

In turn, with his contributions, the Boston Celtics have proven to be one of, if not the best squad in the association during this span, winning 24 of their 32 total games played.

During this stretch, the forward has been posting sensational all-around averages of 28.2 points, 7.7 rebounds, 4.7 assists, and just shy of a steal per game on 47 percent shooting from the floor and nearly 35 percent shooting from deep.

With every passing day, the 3x All-Star has simply found himself getting better and better throughout this season, doing everything he needs to in order to guide his team to a win, and now, as of the early stages of March, Boston is viewed as a realistic threat to contend for this year’s Larry O’Brien Trophy.

Again, as we said earlier, the team’s triumphs over these last few months have been the result of high-end production from the team overall, but the all-encompassing leader of the C’s during this stretch, both with his play on the hardwood and presence in the locker room, has undoubtedly been Tatum, which has us at HH actually believing that he could find himself smack dab in the middle of this year’s MVP race come awards season.

From his defensive efforts and scoring efficiency to the long-awaited improvements to the distribution aspect of his game, the fifth-year wing has been playing lights-out as the campaign has rolled farther and farther along and, since the All-Star break, he’s managed to up his production to a whole new level with stellar averages of 34.9 points (most in the league), 6.9 rebounds, and 4.6 assists on nearly 50 percent shooting from the floor and 39 percent shooting from deep.

To make things a bit more recent, since the start of March, Jayson Tatum has found himself leading the league in points per game with averages of 39.8 to go along with 6.4 rebounds and 4.8 assists on 54 percent shooting from the floor and 42 percent shooting from deep.

As a result of his stupendous play, the Boston Celtics have lost just once since the break and, should he keep this level of play up, it’s hard to believe that they’ll succumb to too many more defeats during these final 14 games of the year.

With Tatum leading the charge, on the season as a whole the shamrocks boast the fourth-best NET Rating in the league and, since the team started on their post-New Year’s run they now hold the best numbers in this department.

It’s no coincidence that the team turned into a true title contender once Jayson Tatum started to perform at one of the highest levels of his already illustrious career and, because of this, many believe that he’s well on his way towards his second All-NBA nod while we at the Houdini believe he easily could find himself in the running for the moniker of Most Valuable Player come season’s end.