With the NBA trade deadline just days away and the All-Star break not far behind, the home stretch of the season is right around the corner. Most teams are just about 50 games into their season, and things are starting to come into place with the sample size getting larger by the day and true contenders starting to separate themselves.
Still, some variables could drastically alter the way this season plays out, and with that in mind, Zach Lowe and Howard Beck drafted their biggest x-factors for the rest of the season, and both analysts agreed that it’s Jayson Tatum, and it’s not particularly close.
Beck had the first pick in this made-up draft on the January 29th episode of the Zach Lowe Show, and of his Tatum pick, he declared, “This one is so obvious it’s stupid…I don’t think there’s a bigger x-factor potentially on the board, anywhere, conceptually or otherwise, for this season.”
He praised JT and even went on to compare a potential Tatum return to Michael Jordan returning from his baseball career after Scottie Pippen had been acting as the number one for the Bulls.
Lowe readily agreed that Tatum was number one on his list as well and talked about how incredible the Celtics have been without him, especially their offense. He ultimately conceded that even without Tatum, he thinks the Celtics are good enough to make the Finals, although the margins are incredibly thin.
Adding Tatum would be bigger than any trade deadline acquisition
The reason that this was such an easy choice for Lowe and Beck is that there’s no precedent for anything like this. Beck made the MJ/Pippen analogy, but even that has some holes. Here we’d have a team that has totally reinvented itself with Jaylen Brown as its top option, ready to welcome back one of the five best players in the league.
That addition for the Celtics would be bigger than any move that could be made at the trade deadline, and that includes a Giannis Antetokounmpo deal. Even if a star like Giannis is traded, he’ll be acclimating to a whole new team on the fly, a team that likely won’t be well-built around him, and the chances of that move impacting the title race have proven to be quite long.
Hell, we saw it last season as the Lakers were gifted Luka Doncic in one of the most shocking and lopsided trades in league history. And even still, LA’s roster was poorly designed around Luka, and the team was badly outclassed in the first round of the playoffs.
Conversely, Tatum would be returning to play with the only franchise he’s ever known, for his trusted coach Joe Mazzulla, and alongside familiar teammates like Brown, Derrick White, Payton Pritchard, Sam Hauser, and others.
We’ve never seen anything like it before, and that’s what makes it such a massive x-factor. Tatum could come back and lead the Cs to the Finals, he could come back and mess up the rhythm of the team, or he could sit out the entire season. All of those possibilities and everything in between is truly in play, and that’s what makes this such a fascinating situation for the entire league to watch.