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Boston’s Jayson Tatum opens up about Celtics’ rough start to 2021-22 NBA season

Justin Quinn
·4 min read

Boston Celtics star forward Jayson Tatum recently sat down with former NBA player JJ Redick to talk all things Celtics with Redick on his podcast, “The Old Man and the 3” in a wide-ranging interview that touched on plenty of NBA-related topics as well as aspects of their personal lives.

Reddick and Tatum both happen to be alumni of the Duke Blue Devils NCAA Men’s basketball program as well, which of course came up also as the pair discussed the impact of the Duke alumni network on their lives. But the bulk of the conversation remained trained on Tatum’s play with the Celtics, particularly some of the early-season criticism the team was subjected to after uneven performances made for a poor record.

“It caught me off guard for sure,” said Tatum of the critiques.

“I think you have to understand,” he explained, “with being in the NBA … we had just blown an 18-point lead to Chicago,” referencing an early, ugly collapse to the Bulls following an unexpectedly poor showing to start the team’s 2021-22 regular-season schedule.

“This was the beginning of the season, we were 2 – 5, (and) everybody was on edge a little bit.”

There had been a few particularly tense moments, particularly comments made by veteran point guard Marcus Smart after an especially painful loss calling out the play of teammates Jaylen Brown and Tatum that the latter spoke on a bit.

“I wasn’t angry or mad or anything,” suggested Tatum. “I just waited until the next day. I saw Marcus at the facility, and we sat down and talked.”

“It was a great talk, actually,” the St. Louis native continued. “We had some time to sleep, the adrenaline was gone from the game.”

“He apologized for what he said, and that it was something that he should not have said in the media, and that they got his words mixed up. I didn’t take offense.”

“I started it off by saying, ‘Bro, I’m not perfect — I make mistakes. I still have got a long way to go from where I’m trying to get to,'” he added.

“I think we ended the conversation on, we are in this together, we are all on the same team and we are trying to figure it out. Trying to say things like that in the media doesn’t help anyone’s case because that’s all they talk about for the next week or so when referring to the Celtics.”

“It wasn’t the end of the world,” Tatum suggested. “No harm, no foul, we are past it now.”

At the time, it was indeed alarming and helped spark a lot of the other narrative we’ve previously reported on Tatum and Reddick discussing on the podcast — namely, splitting up the Duke product and Brown.

But sometimes, adversity creates strength. And in the case of being thrown into the fire without the crutches of veteran stars to lean on this season appears to have forged stronger bonds and better play.

Now the question is how far that bond — and these players — can carry the Celtics into the postseason.

This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire. Follow us on Facebook!

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