Jayson Tatum offers several strong takes on sports betting's effect on the game
Jayson Tatum, in the middle of sports betting's annual holiday, March Madness, offered several strong takes on how the industry has affected his experience with NBA fans during his last few seasons with the Boston Celtics.
As No. 0 points out, some fans have become brazen in talking trash to him and others in the event the players don't satisfy those fans' player props.
“Fans yell s*** all the time,” Tatum said (h/t Boston.com). “Shoot one more three, get one more rebound, get 25 before the half is over. So that’s definitely a part of it, for sure. It wasn’t like that my first few years. It definitely has changed. I guess when you hit people’s parlays and do good for them, they tell me. But then they also talk s*** if I’m on the court and I didn’t get 29 in a half, or whatever I was supposed to do.”
Tatum shared that fan banter on Twitter gives him mixed emotions: enjoyment and guilt chief among them.
“Yeah, you see people on Twitter,” Tatum prefaced before saying, "Fans going back-and-forth with players on Twitter about how you lost them money. I guess it’s kind of funny. I don’t know. I guess I do feel bad when I don’t hit people’s parlays. I don’t want to them lose money, but yeah know I just go out there and try to play the game.”
Jayson Tatum takes right approach about sports betting
There's already plenty of pressure being a professional athlete -- you're dealing with a lot of people's happiness levels, whether that's a fair burden to put on athletes or not -- so the added element of controlling their earnings, or financial losses, amplifies that by 1,000.
That Tatum is able to be realistic about how he feels while showing empathy for fans he's disappointed shows why he is the perfect representative for an NBA franchise. No. 0 has always shown maturity, but being mature in the face of out-of-bounds criticism is next-level laudable.
Too bad there can't be more Tatum's. Guys like Kevin Durant who show contempt towards fans who act in this manner give the league a bad name. Imagine making hundreds of millions of dollars over your life and getting angry at fans who believed in you to surpass what sportsbooks expected of you on a given night?
Couldn't be Boston Celtics fans. They have one of the all-time good guys who cares about fans and doesn't openly despise them like others.