Jayson Tatum has notched up his 34th 30-point game for the season, making him the first Boston Celtics player to achieve the feat since Larry Bird back in 1987-88.
Tatum reached the milestone just a little over halfway through the third quarter against the Cleveland Cavaliers, in a game which he ended with 41 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists to lead Boston to their 45th win of the season. That continued what has been a career-best year for the Celtics’ star, seeing him average a tick over 30 points per game and notch up his fourth All-Star appearance in as many years.
Since he entered the league as the third pick in the 2017 draft, Jayson Tatum has shown a penchant for scoring, improving his numbers each year and averaging over 26 points for each of the past three years. Never, however, has he been able to put up 30-point games with as much regularity as he has this year. In 2021-22, he got there 29 times in the regular season; having hit the milestone 34 times already and with 19 games still to go this year, he's looking likely to go well beyond that this year.
It's been 35 years since Larry Bird last notched up the same achievement, during a season in which the Celtics finished atop the Eastern Conference standings and made their way through to the Conference Finals, where they were defeated in six games by the Pistons. With Boston currently neck and neck with the Bucks for top spot in the East, they’ll be hoping to go a couple of steps further than what Bird’s Boston managed all those years ago.
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