Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown’s partnership hasn’t been perfect. But it’s been almost as fruitful as any Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson side the NBA has seen over the past 15 seasons.
Monday night at TD Garden culminated in the duo’s first championship after defeating the Dallas Mavericks 4-1 in the 2024 NBA Finals.
They have been All-Stars. Both have made All-NBA teams. Tatum has been considered in multiple MVP races. And together, they have led the Boston Celtics to the top of the Eastern Conference almost every year. But with each season before this one ended short of the ultimate goal, the whispers grew louder.
Should one be exchanged?
Is Brown worth the huge contract Boston is paying him?
When will Tatum shake off his postseason woes?
Will Brown ever be able to get to the basket after dribbling with his left hand?
With each season without titles, the questions became stronger. But the Celtics did not dissolve the partnership and have been rewarded.
That doesn’t mean there weren’t several low moments. There was the 2022 NBA Finals when they lost to the Golden State Warriors and the brilliance of Curry. There was the loss in the 2023 Eastern Conference finals to the Miami Heat when they lost three games in the series only to come back and lose in Game 7.
Here’s a timeline through the Tatum and Brown years and everything leading up to this moment, Boston’s first championship since 2008, via stories from The Athletic.
- The ‘Jaylen and Jayson show’ started long before they were Celtics
- The Celtics began early to mold Jayson Tatum for their system
April 22, 2018: ‘Growing pains’ will pay off
As written by Jay King, Tatum clapped his hands in frustration, following a 104-102 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks with a chance to take control of a series. Tatum and Brown were magnificent in that game, especially in the second half. They combined to score 55 points, making them the first duo under the age of 22 to do so since Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.
At the very least, they showed that they were capable of reaching a superstar ceiling and that they were capable of lifting each other up. But this was one of the games where Celtics veterans knew this was tending to be their team. Tatum and Brown were beginning to make their mark on Boston’s roster, and the Celtics front office knew how to build around them.
That night, Tatum and Brown showed that they were the players who could lead Boston to a title.
“We need those guys to play well,” said then-Boston forward Marcus Morris Sr.. “And I think they understand that.”
June 2, 2020: How to build around Tatum and Brown
A little over four years ago, in a deep dive with John Hollinger, Jared Weiss wrote about building the roster around the star duo.
Weiss wrote: The Celtics’ core roster-building strategy has been based on spreading the floor with playmakers. Is this the next evolution of the offense and can it keep up with offenses surrounding one or two singular talents?
It says a lot that this was the first comment ever because it speaks to how obvious the strategy should be and should have been. Brad Stevens left the Boston bench, became head of the board and formed an almost perfect team around Tatum and Brown. What he saw this season was a giant capable of stretching the field and finding space. They could switch and make life miserable for their opponents defensively. They relied on three-pointers en masse and never overreacted when shots weren’t falling.
Because Tatum and Brown generated three-level offensive pressure, they became extremely difficult for opposing defenses to deal with. How do you send help? Who can you drop? Boston’s offense forced you to choose your poison. There was no real way to stop it.
This story with Hollinger and Weiss turned out to be prophetic, and Hollinger wrote:
“I think there are players who could better maximize the value of Boston’s other backcourt guys, but they’re also good enough to not be available. In a fantasy fantasy, it would be nice to have Kristaps Porziņģis sitting there spotting the weak side, but he won’t walk through that door. (I’m sorry).”
Only Porziņģis ultimately came in relative to Hollinger and Rick Pitino. And he unlocked much of Boston’s offense around Tatum and Brown.
- How Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum continue to rise
- Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown put last season behind them and hope to move towards the expected success.
- Five statistics that underline Jaylen Brown’s spectacular improvement
- How Jayson Tatum is figuring out how to score at the rim
- Measuring Jayson Tatum’s success handling double teams
May 27, 2020: Why Brown May Be Better Than You Think
Written by King and Seth Partnow, this was an important story because it highlighted why Boston needed to stay the course. Part of the discourse surrounding Tatum and Brown has been that the Celtics needed to move Brown by trading for a better No. 2 for Tatum. This 2020 piece rejected that idea.
Take this from Partnow about Brown’s defensive ability and think about how he defended in this postseason and against the Mavericks in the Finals.
“I’m glad you mentioned defensive versatility,” Partnow wrote. “Because I think Brown’s ability to wrestle in a wide variety of matchups has been part of what’s allowed Tatum to expand his offensive game.
“According to NBA.com matchup data, the average touchdown usage in Tatum’s matchups was around the league average, while Brown’s matchups were in the 81st percentile for touchdown usage. Part of this defensive load has been Brown taking on the challenges of defending bigger opposing scorers with some frequency.
“For example, Brown has faced Anthony Davis, Pascal Siakam, Bam Adebayo, Kristaps Porziņģis, Al Horford, Paul Millsap and Julius Randle much more than Tatum. “Brown’s ability to credibly compete with those bigger players allows Boston to play four and five with regularity.”
Brown’s ability to be versatile on the defensive end gave Boston defensive versatility in these playoffs that was almost unmatched. It’s one of the main reasons why the Celtics are champions.
February 23, 2021: Brown and Tatum earn their first All-Star nods together
As written by King, this was the first time the duo became All-Stars together. Since then, they’ve accomplished the feat twice, but milestones are milestones, and this one was important to Brown and Tatum as a partnership. With each step you take, the end goal becomes a little easier to see. The recognition of Brown and Tatum for their talent and production at the same time allowed the organization to take another small step towards a championship.
“I think they both certainly deserve it,” Stevens said at the time.
- How Jayson Tatum can learn from Jaylen Brown
- Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum are ready for their moment
- Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown pass the ball in the decisive moment
- Jaylen Brown endorses partnership with Jayson Tatum after first career triple-double
- Ime Udoka’s task as Celtics coach will be to maximize Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown
- How Jayson Tatum can fix the Celtics’ brief but destructive offensive collapses
- Next Celtics coach must get Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown to lead the way
- Celtics offseason preview: How to build around Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown
December 12, 2022: Reflecting on the pain of the finals
Sam Amick and Weiss got the duo talking about their Finals loss to the Warriors for the first time since that series. The Warriors never went through that pain. Once they were really ready to perform as a group, they reached a championship level almost instantly.
But Golden State inflicted a lot of pain on the Celtics in 2022. Boston was probably the better team overall, but Curry was the best player in the series by such a wide margin that he tipped the series almost single-handedly. The Celtics had to learn from that collectively. Tatum had to learn from it individually because he wasn’t good enough in that series. Neither did Brown, who on multiple occasions allowed himself to be frustrated by Golden State’s Draymond Green.
Tatum and Brown were so mature in this final appearance, both mentally and physically, that it’s easy to see they both learned from the Golden State experience.
“We literally gave everything we had,” Tatum said. “And coming up short just killed everyone.”
“Definitely disappointed,” Brown told Weiss. “Being in a moment where you feel like victory is at your door, being able to be crowned champions, and you start to feel like that’s the direction we’re headed. Then that rug just gets pulled right under you.
“Everyone thought we were going to win, everyone expected us to win and we didn’t. So, that’s where the disappointment comes, the anger at first, and then, it’s humbling, you work. It’s embarrassing, almost in a sense, and that’s where the growth comes from, right?
“Everyone sees you, the whole world is watching and everyone saw you lose. “The whole world saw us lose and there is a lot of humility in that.”
- How Brown and Tatum Had a Historic Night and Developed Their Partnership
- Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum earn All-NBA honors
- Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum live what Paul Pierce could have had
July 25, 2023: Brown signs supermax
Weiss, King and Shams Charania broke down the huge contract Brown signed and why, despite the money, it was a move the Celtics had to make.
Boston even came up a little short in this one because it came before the Jrue Holiday trade that turned the Celtics from favorites to all-timers. It was certainly thought that with this contract Boston’s options beyond this to improve the roster would be severely limited. And then Stevens brought out the Christmas bunny.
This story is a breakdown of the contract, why Boston’s brass doubled down on the partnership and how the Celtics could benefit. He also went through the risk involved, because there was certainly a lot of it at the time.
June 1, 2024: Mazzulla denounces the Tatum vs. narrative. Brown
“They are two of the best teammates and players you can have and it has been an honor to coach them both,” Mazzulla said. “That doesn’t mean they have to be the same. So they are bulls. “I love them both and they deserve better.”
Mazzulla is not wrong.
Over the years, social media has pitted the two against each other, and over the years, Brown and Tatum have voiced their opinion by calling him out. Even in these Finals, we’ve debated who would be the Finals MVP, but maybe that’s because that MVP race was more competitive than the NBA Finals itself. One of the main reasons Boston has thrived as a team is because Tatum and Brown have thrived as a duo.
When one has fought, the other has been great. Both have affected games on each side of the court. This race hasn’t been about either/or. It’s about the Boston Celtics, and Mazzulla states it emphatically in this story.
- Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown put team ahead of box score
- Summary of the 2024 All-Star Game
- Brown and Tatum’s teamwork consolidates victory
- Jason Kidd calls Jaylen Brown, not Jayson Tatum, Celtics’ best player
- Jason Kidd’s challenge to a ‘sacred’ partnership drives victory in game three
- Jason Kidd insists there are ‘no mind games’ with praise for Jaylen Brown
- Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum near the ring, but “the job is not done.”
(Photo: Maddie Meyer//Keynote USA/Getty Images)
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