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Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum recently sat down for a wide-ranging interview with Bill Simmons of The Ringer. Amid their discussion, the 20-year-old revealed which player he looked up to most growing up.
Tatum: For young guys — obviously we’re in the NBA, but we still kinda look up to a lot of guys that are older than us.
Simmons: Your guy was LeBron, right? As a kid?
Tatum: No, my favorite player was Kobe (Bryant).
Simmons: Oh, so when he did the Detail [episode] on you, that was a big deal.
Tatum: Yeah, I watched it like 70 times. That was my favorite player ever. But LeBron was one of them, Carmelo, Paul George, KD. Guys that just play the wing position.
The Celtics selected Tatum with the third overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft. Though he's young, the former Duke Blue Devil has quickly made a name for himself in the pros.
Tatum appeared in 80 regular-season games with the Celtics during their 2017-18 campaign, averaging 13.9 points on 47.5 percent shooting from the field (43.4 percent from beyond the arc), 5.0 rebounds, 1.6 assists, and 1.0 steal in 30.5 minutes per outing.
Though he favored Kobe most, Tatum noted that he fashioned his game after several different players.
“I took a little bit from everybody,” Tatum explained. “Especially like, I studied a lot of Paul George and Melo (Carmelo Anthony) when I was in high school. Those were two guys that I always would watch film on. And Kobe, just from the day I started playing. Like, he was the reason I wanted to play basketball [as] a kid. My earliest basketball memory was of him.”
The fact that Tatum looked up to Bryant — a five-time champion and 18-time All-Star — should come as no surprise. In fact, a lot of young players try to model their game after his to this day, and Tatum has even done some work with the Los Angeles Lakers legend.
