Yahoo Sports senior NBA reporter Jake Fischer and Senior NBA writer Dan Devine discuss what the Boston Celtics winning their 18th title does for Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown’s reputations. Hear the full conversation on “No Cap Room” – part of the “Ball Don’t Lie” podcast – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
Yeah, after that first quarter run or Tatum had one really hard drive and one he’s, you know, flexing and pounding his chest, a lot of emotion out of him, which doesn’t usually play with.
He’s kind of a pretty stoic reserved guy.
I think part of it is for all the external noise and the pressure that gets put on you when, you know, I was really struck by how many people around this organization around the building tonight.
We’re kind of repeating the same theme of like, it’s been so long, but like, it’s been a long time coming.
Like, that’s what happens when you make the conference finals when these two guys were a rookie and a sophomore in Tatum’s very first year and it’s really not like so early when you think about it.
Like Steph’s first title came if I’m doing mental math off the top of my head.
He was drafted in 09, like 67 years after that, lebron like Jordan, like this isn’t, it kind of feels like it happened when it was meant to happen and, but like, you could feel all of the noise and all of the naysayers and the doubt kind of, I mean, especially, I mean, at, at the half, all of all of tatum, 16 points except for the one step back, three at the end of the second quarter, all of them came at the rim which is like, felt kind of exercising demons.
Like to me, it felt kind of similar to lebron Miami hitting those pull ups in Boris Diaz’s face because that’s been the knock on Tatum, right?
That he either can’t get there and when he does, he can’t finish and I don’t know what the numbers will finish out because he missed a couple layups down the stretch in the fourth when the game was well in doubt.
But I, I mean, it, to me that was what I was feeling and observing as we saw him pounding his chest and hanging on the rim and really kind of kind of celebrating his routine ways to the rim.
All first half those like the player development story and, you know, we’ll get into Tatum and Brown and they just sort of larger journey as we move forward.
But like there was that, you know, that Marcus Smart a couple of years ago saying like everybody knows that those guys are gonna have the ball and they want to take the shots and they don’t want to pass it.
And it was like a harsh critique, but it was an accurate critique and those guys both had to advance their games and grow their games and that, and that’s one way like a giant way to do it and it was not an easy and quick transition for them, but they both made it and like Tatum finishes with 11 assists tonight.
Brown finishes with six assists tonight.
Um their ability to, with the game on their shoulders and the team on their shoulders handle more of that shot, creation workload for other people.
Look to use the drive to create all of the discussion, you know, throughout their run up and in the middle of the series, when you know the questions were coming about like Jalen Brown, what did you take away from that loss to the heat in game seven last year?
Jason Tatum, what did you take away from that loss to the Warriors being up to one a couple of years ago, uh and then falling down, losing three straight games in the finals.
But Jalen Brown said something that is just gonna stick in my brain.
The quote was my experiences.
The heartbreaks, the losses have, have all kind of cultivated into what you see now.
I don’t want to feel that again.
MVP goes to Jalen Brown.
He’s spoken pretty routinely this po this postseason about not caring anymore about what people say.
I will say.
Watching him on the podium here are on the stage when, when they, when Adam Silver announced the MVP, he seemed genuinely surprised.
We’ve talked about the two way, the two way brilliance to me, that’s why Jalen Brown got it.
It was all over Luca picking him up at the opposite foul line to the point that Dallas is setting screens for Luca before he even cross on half court and he just always from a feelings standpoint, he just always kind of delivered when like they needed it that third quarter in game three.
He felt like the dude that was leading the charge from like a physical like battle uh imagery if you want to use that.
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