With a number of top prospects of the 2021 NBA draft recently declaring their intention to skip college and go straight to the G League, a new legitimate path to the NBA appears to have been paved. Now, Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum has weighed in on the matter.
According to the Celtics rising star, had he been given the same opportunity a couple of years ago, he probably would have taken the G League money instead of going to Duke.
“It's tough because knowing what I know now, I think I still might have went to Duke,” Jayson Tatum said on a recent appearance on Showtime's “All the Smoke” Podcast with Stephen Jackson and Jayson Tatum.
“But if you just rewind four years and I'm 18 coming out of high school from St. Louis and there's $500,000, I'm going right to the G League, for sure. They need to change in college. I think you should be able to make money off your likeness.”
To be clear though, Tatum also mentioned that with the knowledge he has now, he believes that it was the right decision to play for the Blue Devils. He obviously learned a lot in the one year he played in the NCAA, and at this point, he would not exchange that experience for half a million dollars.
That's easy for him to say, however, especially now that he's on a multi-million NBA deal with the Celtics
This is not the first time Tatum has made this claim. The Celtics stud had a previous discussion on the same subject with Washington Wizards star Bradley Beal in an Instagram Live video. Tatum said then that he still would have chosen Duke over the G League — something that Beal did not exactly believe.
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