Happy Birthday: Jayson Tatum turns 25 on Friday
BOSTON -- The longstanding joke with Jayson Tatum is that the Celtics star will forever be a 19-year-old. But reality is much, much different, and on Friday, Tatum will have completed another trip around the sun.
Tatum hasn't been a teenager for a while, and on Friday he hits his mid-20s, turning 25 years old. It's still a pretty young and chipper age for someone who has already accomplished quite a bit in his six NBA seasons.
An NBA title still eludes him, but Tatum and the Celtics seem determined to change that this summer. His MVP effort throughout the year has had the Celtics atop the NBA standings for much of the season. He probably won't take home MVP honors, but he does have an All-Star Game MVP from his 55-point explosion in Utah last month.
The sky seems to be the limit for Tatum, a silent superstar who has improved his all-around game every year since he was the No. 3 overall pick in 2017. He's a ridiculously talented scorer with an ever-growing bag of moves, and will likely become the first Celtics player to ever average 30 points per game for a season by year's end. But he's also a talented rebounder, an extremely underrated passer, and a solid defender. He is the total package.
And, again, he's only 25 and always improving.
Tatum beat the buzzer on a career milestone Wednesday night, when he dropped 41 points in a Boston win over the Cleveland Cavaliers. Those 41 points moved Tatum past Giannis Antetokounmpo on the NBA's all-time under-25 scoring list. Tatum's 9,429 before turning 25 trail only LeBron James (13,927 points), Kevin Durant (12,258), Carmelo Anthony (10,768), Kobe Bryant (10,658), Tracy McGrady (10,420), and Devin Booker (9,481 points) on that list.
Pretty good company to be a part of. But Tatum has joined some even more impressive names in the Celtics history books this season, sidling the likes of Larry Bird, Bill Russell, Paul Pierce and other Boston legends. He's currently 15th on Boston's all-time scoring list, and while he has a long way to go before sniffing John Havlicek's record of 26,395 points, it's a list he should continue to climb in the coming years.
Tatum's 51-point game against the Hornets earlier this season gave him five 50-point games for his career, surpassing Bird for the most in C's history. With a 34-point, 19-rebound outburst in a win over the Warriors in January, he joined Bird, Russell, Dave Cowens, and Robert Parish as the only Boston players with at least 34 points and 19 rebounds in a game.
Three-pointers are the way of the NBA these days, but Tatum is already second in Celtics history in 3-pointers made with 1,021. He trails only Paul Pierce and his 1,823 makes from downtown. Tatum's 2,705 3-point attempts rank fourth in Celtics history.
He's also the only player to make 1,000 threes before his 25th birthday -- in NBA history.
Tatum's offensive assault and all-around game has Pierce believing that he has the potential to go down as the greatest Celtic ever, though everyone knows he'll have to add a banner or 12 to the TD Garden rafters to claim that title.
But he's already accomplished a lot on an individual level, and the team success seems like it's very, very close. And as you may have heard a few times, Tatum's only 25, and has plenty of career left to further etch his name in Celtics lore.