Jayson Tatum: Narrative Says We're A Superteam, But We Didn't Get Rewarded Like We Are

[RealGM Wiretap]

After a disappointing Game 2 loss for the second consecutive series, Jayson Tatum spoke about the expectations outsiders have placed on the Boston Celtics following their dominant regular season.

“We get it,” Tatum said after the Celtics were blown out in the second half by the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 2. “The world thinks we’re never supposed to lose. We’re supposed to win every game by 25. It’s not gonna be like that all the time. We don’t expect it to be easy. This is a good team we’re playing. It’s the second round of the playoffs. It’s going to be fun the rest of the series, especially come Saturday.”

Tatum also talked about the superteam narrative placed on the Celtics.

“That’s the narrative you might see on TV,” Tatum said. “The idea that we have a superteam. It’s two-fold, right? We didn’t have the Coach of the Year. We didn’t have the MVP. We only had two All-Stars. They say we’re a superteam, but we didn’t get rewarded like we are. We know we’ve got a good team. We’re not perfect. We play the right way more often than not. We know we gotta be better.”

Via Tim Crowley/NESN.com

[TMac Culloch]

Probably not the best thing to have your best player say expectations are too high during the playoffs!

[Wingy]

Probably not the best thing to have your best player say expectations are too high during the playoffs!

Though, he’s not wrong either.

[Phila Tough]

Probably not the best thing to have your best player say expectations are too high during the playoffs!

Though, he’s not wrong either.

stop, this Boston team is stacked. It will be very very disappointing if they don't at least make it to the finals in this weak conference

[Lalouie]

Probably not the best thing to have your best player say expectations are too high during the playoffs!

he's placing limitations already and that's not good. he's not wrong but when you say stuff IN PUBLIC it becomes part of the narrative, like it or not. you can't go around feeling invincible, but otoh he just to a cap on the team's potential. they have more than enough to employ work arounds on their weaknesses.

[dubbmotta]

Probably not the best thing to have your best player say expectations are too high during the playoffs!

he's placing limitations already and that's not good. he's not wrong but when you say stuff IN PUBLIC it becomes part of the narrative, like it or not. you can't go around feeling invincible, but otoh he just to a cap on the team's potential. they have more than enough to employ work arounds on their weaknesses.

The bigger problem is the media..if you watch the interview is not as bad as reading it. team loses one game and these trolls want to crucify them. Can't remember the last time a team swept every team in the playoffs. Let the dudes lose the series before coming at them.

[Wingy]

Probably not the best thing to have your best player say expectations are too high during the playoffs!

Though, he’s not wrong either.

stop, this Boston team is stacked. It will be very very disappointing if they don't at least make it to the finals in this weak conference

Top two players were drafted and home grown.

Jrue and Kristaps while still high level aren’t even all stars anymore. Neither forced their way to Boston. They weren’t some “player empowerment” acquisitions. The Celtics FO actually gave up real assets to get them.

It’s not a super team. Period.

and yes. They’ll still make the Finals, because a strong, organically built team like them is stronger than most any manufactured super team.

[Lalouie]

Probably not the best thing to have your best player say expectations are too high during the playoffs!

he's placing limitations already and that's not good. he's not wrong but when you say stuff IN PUBLIC it becomes part of the narrative, like it or not. you can't go around feeling invincible, but otoh he just to a cap on the team's potential. they have more than enough to employ work arounds on their weaknesses.

The bigger problem is the media..if you watch the interview is not as bad as reading it. team loses one game and these trolls want to crucify them. Can't remember the last time a team swept every team in the playoffs. Let the dudes lose the series before coming at them.

and that would be lack of focus on the task at hand. every winner avoids outside influences. lombardi,,,wooden,,,riley,,,,spurs,,,,walton,,,,mj. so if you let outsiders influence you that's on you

[kalel123]

Though, he’s not wrong either.

stop, this Boston team is stacked. It will be very very disappointing if they don't at least make it to the finals in this weak conference

Top two players were drafted and home grown.

Jrue and Kristaps while still high level aren’t even all stars anymore. Neither forced their way to Boston. They weren’t some “player empowerment” acquisitions. The Celtics FO actually gave up real assets to get them.

It’s not a super team. Period.

and yes. They’ll still make the Finals, because a strong, organically built team like them is stronger than most any manufactured super team.

It's not a super team per se. But it's also not a team built the way you are describing exactly. They are still living off an astronomical mistake by another team that have had abundance of extra (nice) resources added to it as a result. You still have to draft 'em but not exactly difficult to build like a "super team" with all those extras.

[donaldtrump_00]

Shut up and let the winner win.

[puja21]

It's not a super team per se. But it's also not a team built the way you are describing exactly. They are still living off an astronomical mistake by another team that have had abundance of extra (nice) resources added to it as a result. You still have to draft 'em but not exactly difficult to build like a "super team" with all those extras.

Who is NOT living off an astronomical mistake by another team?

Knicks got Brunson because Cuban for the 2nd time in 20 years meddled in GMing and said "we're not going to pay this *secondary* star who isn't an MVP caliber point guard"

Dallas lucked into Luka because of Vlade Divac -- in one of the worst decisions by a GM in recent memory

GSW lucked into Curry because David Kahn -- in again one of the worst decisions by a GM -- took not one but TWO point guards immediately before Steph Curry.

Oklahoma City was gifted SGA in the PG13 demand on top of FIVE FRPs and 2 FRP swaps

Minnesota is absolutely destroying Denver in games 1 and 2 on a roster that was built by Denver's OWN creator, Tim Connelly because of the astronomical mistake that Stan Kroenke made when he decided that he wasn’t going to do what it took to keep Connelly.

Not one of these moves was hindsight -- these were well chronicled mistakes in the moment they happened. (Real hindsight is something like Memphis pretending they knew Marc Gasol would become a star when they made the Pau trade).

The point is, Boston isn't some outlier of random good fortune that only happened to them, while the rest of the leauge "really had to work" with no luck of their own.

Billy King made tons of other mistakes that benefited his competitors. Ditto for Colangelo.

EVERY single team has to be good AND lucky. Full stop.

[HotelVitale]

It's not a super team per se. But it's also not a team built the way you are describing exactly. They are still living off an astronomical mistake by another team that have had abundance of extra (nice) resources added to it as a result. You still have to draft 'em but not exactly difficult to build like a "super team" with all those extras.

Who is NOT living off an astronomical mistake by another team?

Knicks got Brunson because Cuban for the 2nd time in 20 years meddled in GMing and said "we're not going to pay this *secondary* star who isn't an MVP caliber point guard"

Dallas lucked into Luka because of Vlade Divac -- in one of the worst decisions by a GM in recent memory

GSW lucked into Curry because David Kahn -- in again one of the worst decisions by a GM -- took not one but TWO point guards immediately before Steph Curry.

Oklahoma City was gifted SGA in the PG13 demand on top of FIVE FRPs and 2 FRP swaps

Minnesota is absolutely destroying Denver in games 1 and 2 on a roster that was built by Denver's OWN creator, Tim Connelly because of the astronomical mistake that Stan Kroenke made when he decided that he wasn’t going to do what it took to keep Connelly.

Not one of these moves was hindsight -- these were well chronicled mistakes in the moment they happened. (Real hindsight is something like Memphis pretending they knew Marc Gasol would become a star when they made the Pau trade).

The point is, Boston isn't some outlier of random good fortune that only happened to them, while the rest of the leauge "really had to work" with no luck of their own.

Billy King made tons of other mistakes that benefited his competitors. Ditto for Colangelo.

EVERY single team has to be good AND lucky. Full stop.

I agree with your general point about every team needing luck, but almost all of these examples were very much hindsight--in the sense that yes many people criticized those moves but no one knew they would 100% turn out as catastrophically as we know now, and there was definitely many other possible outcomes at the time of these transactions.

Just taking two examples: lots of folks thought throwing in SGA to a rich package was a lot, and some people could even say they were extremely high on SGA. But almost no one would've legit bet their house on him becoming an all-NBA guy, let alone a legit MVP candidate. And yes Curry was a really nice prospect and Kahn shouldn't have taken Johnny Flynn over him, but the people who were highest on him didn't even expect him to become this good (and if you try to guess on prospects like Curry you'll be wrong most of the time).

Also in the case of BOS--the Pierce-KG trade was pretty widely criticized but no one thought that the Nets would become garbage within two seasons. They had a top-10 guy in his prime (Deron) and another young low-level AS (Brook Lopez) plus 3-4 other nice starters, and they were just adding in KG and Pierce to that. People thought they traded too much , but it was an extremely unlikely and very unlucky outcome for D Will to mysteriosuly wash out before he turned 30 and everything else to fall apart within two years. The picks BOS got should've been mostly mid-late 1sts and then maybe a nice one at the end, getting 3 straight top picks was really just dumb luck and the result of something totally unforeseeable falling in their lap.

[pushfloater]

Just make your open shots man

[ChipotleWest]

Instead of just taking personal blame goes on rant about not being super team.

[beefymajesto]

Used to love the Paul Pierce super team celtics, for some reason can't behind this team, these comments don't help.

[Wingy]

It's not a super team per se. But it's also not a team built the way you are describing exactly. They are still living off an astronomical mistake by another team that have had abundance of extra (nice) resources added to it as a result. You still have to draft 'em but not exactly difficult to build like a "super team" with all those extras.

Or they are a smart org. Unlike the Golden State Warriors, they didn’t let sentimentality get in the way, and acquired those picks shipping out their title stars. While many (inc. me) thought the Nets move was highly questionable, not sure many predicted top 3 picks.

8, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 3

That’s the first 7 google results for 2016 mock drafts and Jaylen Brown’s position in them. Celtics took him at 3 when most of the group think had him 4-5 spots lower.

They also wanted Tatum and got him while trading down.

Not exactly difficult? Neither guy was even close to consensus. Teams fumble the draft constantly, but they nailed it.

Sure they had some luck, but what true title contender doesn’t? The astronomical mistake you call out isn’t necessarily that rare. Teams like the Nets, Wizards and Jazz could be sitting pretty years from now due to teams pushing all their chips to the middle.

[sfernald]

So is losing in the post season actually a passive aggressive way for Celtics to protest that they didn’t get enough recognition for their hard efforts and amazing bball skillz? Mommy and daddy not patting their backs enough?

Is this genz issue or society issue where everyone gets a trophy for trying nowadays?

[dk1115]

Who actually thinks of Boston as a superteam?

I just think they have 8-9 dudes who play well above their respective spots in the rotation.

[JonFromVA]

Media narratives are not analysis, just super lazy takes meant to rile people up ... like Tatum.

[asuran]

This team is missing some bite since Smart got traded.

If asked Pat Bev would definitely say, this team got no dawg.