Tatum showing why trade for Fultz was unnecessary
BOSTON » The sentence was dropped into the middle of a postgame Brett Brown comment, and it would provided the Sixers organization with necessary if flimsy cover.
The topic was Jayson Tatum, the rookie forward who’d just scored 28 points in the Boston Celtics’ 117-101 victory in Game 1 of the NBA’s Eastern Conference semifinals. And Brown was trapped into acknowledging that he’d just seen something special.
“He was great,” he said. “I think he’s had an exceptional year. He’s got a bounce.”
And then … there it came, subtly but not that subtly, casual but pointed.
“When I watch him,” Brown said, “he plays sort of older than his resume suggests.” See what he did there? It wasn’t hard.
It wasn’t hard to understand that a coach with Brown’s ability to see three plays in advance was bracing against the coming turbulence. He was protecting his own rookie, Markelle Fultz, who had just played 28 fewer minutes than Tatum had scored points. In fact, it was almost artistic the way the Sixers’ coach blew right past that sentence, adding that Tatum, “has a lot of bounce and a lot of game. I thought tonight he scored in a variety of ways. I thought he was excellent.”
By then, point was made. Better still, a verbal bunker had been arranged for Bryan Colangelo, who forced Fultz into the Sixers’ growth process. Fultz was the No. 1 overall pick in the last draft, a player with long arms and intriguing skill who had played one year of college basketball at the University of Washington, winning two conference games. The draft-a-razzi had decided, however, that Fultz was a developing superstar. Colangelo, who’d won the No. 3 overall pick with another season of semi-deliberate basketball repugnancy and the random colliding of ping-pong balls, could have waited until his turn and selected Tatum. Instead, he tossed some valuable draft incentives into a package and swapped picks with Boston.
The Sixers drafted Fultz. The Celtics selected Tatum, who’d played one season at Duke and won more than two conference games. And at that moment, both franchises were hopeful that they had their next great rivalry-within-a-rivalry, their Larry Bird or Julius Erving, their Wilt or Russell, their No. 1 overall pick or their No. 3. The secondguessing was instant, but the Sixers were firm. They had what they wanted. And their plea was to just wait and see.
The waiting began early. The waiting continues. Fultz played four games, wrenched his shoulder or some such thing, sat out the next 68, then played the final 10 after the Sixers had already clinched a playoff spot. He played a little early in the first-round series against Miami, proved distracting to the Sixers’ preferred ball-movement offense, and was seated. If he plays again this season, it will be in an emergency. If he doesn’t, Brown will return to his default description of his rookie guard: He’s 19.
Since the Sixers were enjoying a fine season, and since their sedated masses had been conditioned to wait for anything, the Fultz-as-a-teenager defense wasn’t aggressively cross-examined. It was, however, odd that while they were apologizing for the youth of Fultz, who will turn 20 May 29, the Sixers were promoting 21-year-old Ben Simmons for Rookie of the Year. Whatever worked.
As for Tatum, he is 20 and right in that Fultz-Simmons generation. Simmons did have an NBA red-shirt year, which probably helped some. But they must become stars, all of them, or somebody made a damaging mistake. Two already are headed that way. One is routinely excused for being a few calendar pages younger.
After a night when Tatum goes for 28 and Fultz is a “DNP, coach’s decision,” it’s convenient to criticize. But Colangelo invited that risk when he had to prove he was the smartest talent-evaluator in the rotisserie league, stumbling over everything just to move two spots up for Fultz. Danny Ainge preferred Tatum anyway. He just made the Sixers pay for his right to make that choice.
Monday, Tatum shot 8-for-16, including 11-for-12 from the line, and uncorked a third consecutive playoff game with at least 20 points. Bird was the last Boston rookie to accomplish that.
“Lot of pride,” Tatum said in the Boston Herald. “I guess people looked at me in college, said I couldn’t shoot or play defense. I proved them wrong.” Some people.
Some.
Someday, Fultz could be so successful. Though he is not, as Brown said Tuesday, “dead and buried,” he is not helping the Sixers this year, when the road to a spot in the NBA Finals appears smooth. Tatum would have helped. If nothing else, the Celtics would have had 28 fewer points Monday in a game they won by 16.
The Sixers might as well figure on more problems from Tatum for the next dozen years. More, perhaps. But, well, he’s just a guy who plays older than his resume.
Contact Jack McCaffery @jmccaffery@21stcenturymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @JackMcCaffery