Sweating the details
Hard work, steady development paid off for Jayson Tatum, Celtics
Duke’s Blue vs. White tipoff scrimmage, a rite of fall in Durham, N.C., is a college basketball showcase unlike any other.
And on Oct. 22, 2016, the star quotient was especially high. Eight McDonald’s All-Americans were on the floor, including Chase Jeter, Frank Jackson, Grayson Allen, Luke Kennard, Matt Jones, Marques Bolden and Emile Jefferson.
But it was the youngest of the McDonald’s honorees, 18-year-old Jayson Tatum, who had Steve Pagliuca starting his wish list for the 2017 NBA draft. The Celtics co-owner thought he was watching Paul Pierce.
It was how Tatum neutralized his opponent with a jab step before draining a fadeaway from the baseline, scoring off of contact. He spun around an upperclassman and dunked off the baseline. He showed off his length blocking shots. Not long after, Danny Ainge got a call from his excited boss.
“You have to understand that Steve makes a call to me every year from that BlueWhite game,” the Celtics president of basketball operations said with a laugh, though he had to admit that last October Pagliuca was quite possibly more breathless than usual.
“He was very excited,” said Ainge. “But my answer to him about Jayson was that I was not surprised. What Jayson was doing was what we would expect him to do. We already had him in the top couple of people in this draft.” Pagliuca, a member of Duke’s freshman team in the early 1970s, is now as much a part of the Cameron Indoor Stadium scene as its elegant, polished woodwork. His oldest son, Joe, a former walk-on, roomed with Luol Deng. His son, Nick, was on the opposing Blue team in that 2016 game, and watched up close as Tatum scored a game-high 18 points in 20 minutes. “The first time I had actually seen him was in one of those pickup games where former players come back, like Jahlil (Okafor), Austin Rivers,” said Nick Pagliuca. “I’m not sure who was there on that particular day, but offensively he could hold his own against any of those pros.
“His game was just so skilled and polished from Day 1. The long twos, the step-back. You could tell he was going to be a pro.”
The stage expands with tonight’s kickoff of NBA All-Star weekend, when Tatum and Jaylen Brown play in the league’s rookie-sophomore showcase, pitting the top American youth against their international brethren. Get past the names of Ben Simmons, Donovan Mitchell and Kyle Kuzma, and there’s Tatum in the Rookie of the Year discussion.
Tatum’s emergence is also making an NBA skills coach named Drew Hanlen look very good. Tatum started training with the former Belmont University guard as a high school freshman. He matured so quickly, Hanlen raised the bar to a wild height.
“I made a bold comment before his freshman year at Duke — that he would be the most skilled NBA rookie ever,” said Hanlen. “(Bradley) Beal, (Zach) LaVine, they were all super-skilled, but I stand behind that.”
Worth the effort
Tatum was a thin, gangly high school freshman — a point guard — when an aunt drove him to his first workout for Hanlen, the founder of Pure Sweat Basketball.
Everything about the session — all of those drills and unrelenting cardio work — left Tatum leaning against a wall after the first 15 minutes.
“I’m really intense, detail-focused, and the first test focused on their conditioning and work ethic,” said Hanlen. “I put them through intense drills and cardio, so you put them in a vulnerable position.
“I gave him a water break during the dead times. He thought he had been there an hour. When I said there’s only 45 minutes left, he said, ‘For real?’”
His mother, Brandy Cole, had heard all of the tough love details by the time Tatum saw her that night.
“I heard you were dying out there,” she said, and he replied quickly.
“You’d have to drag me off the court dead before I would give up,” he told her.
That, Hanlen says now, is when he knew he had a special project. He had started working with Beal, the Wizards’ standout guard, as a high school junior, and otherwise focused on college players like LaVine (Bulls) and Kelly Oubre (Wizards) or, in the case of David Lee, a pro. In Tatum, he had a player he could develop from scratch.
“We laid him out a plan of improvement that would get him NBA ready,” said Hanlen. “All of the guys who come to me are super-talented, and my job is to teach them how to work, and how to work smart and consistently. They have to be willing to put in the extra work, and we focus on micro skills. That’s my staple. My strength is breaking those things down.”
Tatum’s footwork was developed this way.
“As a sophomore in high school we spent one full week working on Kobe Bryant’s jab step, including five days of not shooting a jump shot,” said Hanlen. “For a sophomore to buy into that and not worry about it, he was going to be fine.”
Hanlen laughs when thinking back to the questions that followed Tatum out of Duke and into his pre-draft workouts. His success rate with these NBA aspirants — “Nowadays 100 percent” — is like a guarantee.
Tatum, for instance, had been labeled as a mid-range shooter. Then he shot 81-for-100 from the corners during his pre-draft Celtics workout in Los Angeles. Ainge went over to the person logging the numbers following Tatum’s display. In previous workouts for the Sixers and Suns, the stat-keeper said Tatum had shot 83 and 84 percent.
“We were the worst of the three,” said Ainge. “Sixty-eight or 78 percent would have impressed me.”
Under the radar
Tatum missed the first eight games of his freshman year with a sprained foot, made a quiet Duke debut with 10 points against Maine, and three nights later took off in Madison Square Garden against Florida.
“Twenty-two points against Florida in Madison Square Garden — he just wasn’t afraid of the moment,” said Nick Pagliuca
But Tatum didn’t truly hit his stride until his next time in New York, in the ACC tournament, at the Barclays Center. Kennard was named tournament MVP, but on the way to averaging 22 points over four games, Tatum showed that he was only starting to emerge.
Steve Pagliuca almost wanted to hold a finger to his lips, so Tatum wouldn’t let the secret out.
“You never want anyone to get hurt, but that injury was fortunate for us,” said Tatum’s grateful new boss. “If he was healthy he would have been the consensus No. 1.”