The Boston Celtics have become the standard in the NBA over the last decade. They’ve consistently been competitive, handled roster turnover with grace, and of course, have built a tremendous foundation on the shoulders of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum.
It’s not surprising to see executives around the league point to Boston as the model they’re hoping to build towards. It is, however, frustrating to see them do so inaccurately.
New Orleans Pelicans president of basketball operations Joe Dumars tried using Tatum and Brown as an example of why fans sometimes need to be patient with a team’s chemistry.
According to The Times-Picayune’s Rod Walker, Dumars implored Pelicans fans not to write of a potential Derik Queen-Zion Williamson partnership too soon, because it took a while for Tatum and Brown to figure things out.
Joe Dumars on people thinking Zion and Queen can’t play together.
— Rod Walker (@RodWalkerNola) April 14, 2026
Mentions how he wasn’t sure he and Isaiah Thomas could play together. And people weren’t sure Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum could play together.
It takes time and players figure it out.
Dumars couldn't have picked a worse duo to preach patience with than Tatum and Brown
That’s just not true.
Was there a long-running narrative that the Celtics should split up the Jays because “they couldn’t win together?” It may have been discussed on First Take a few times, sure.
At its core, though, it was never true.
Dumars’ decision to use Boston’s star pairing as the barometer for why fans should be patient with Zion and Queen is ludicrous. The Pelicans just won 26 games in a season where they don’t own their own first-round pick.
They weren’t trying to tank, albeit their season was riddled with injuries.
Per CraftedNBA.com, Williamson and Queen had a net rating of -11 in the 711 minutes in which they shared the court -- that’s the lowest of any pairing that includes either player. In short, something clearly isn’t clicking.
Let me make this abundantly clear. The Celtics never have or will struggle like this with Tatum and Brown sharing the court.
In their first season playing together, they came within one game of the NBA Finals.
“Oh, well that roster was set up to succeed.”
Yes, but Brown and Tatum stepped up in the spring as that roster’s centerpieces, Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward, were sidelined with respective injuries.
They then proceeded to reach the Eastern Conference Finals, or further, in four of the next seven seasons.
If anything, they succeeded too early which caused the media to raise the expectations and start to question the duo’s fit in the years before they eventually won a title.
The Celtics were always succeeding with Tatum and Brown, but because they didn’t necessarily meet the media’s standards, things got twisted.
In no way should Dumars be able to use the fabricated, media-driven, struggles of Tatum and Brown to ask fans to be patient with Williamson and Queen.
Don’t get me wrong, either. It’s fine to ask for patience. Queen is a rookie and has plenty of room to grow as a player which could enable him to fit better next to Zion. Just use any other duo as an example. Don’t pretend like Tatum and Brown weren’t winning from day one.
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