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Jayson Tatum might only have a year of experience at the NBA level, but after playing with a coaching legend like Mike Krzyzewski at Duke, he knows a coaching wizard when he sees one, doing so easily with Boston Celtics boss Brad Stevens.
The 6-foot-8 forward told Bill Simmons of The Ringer when he realized Stevens had a gift for his profession.
Tatum: “Right away. But my favorite play is when we played Philly Game 3.”
Simmons: The Al Horford play?
Tatum: “Yeah, even the play before that when, I think it might’ve been before overtime, or it might’ve been in overtime, but I was taking it out by our bench. And we were doing some cuts and I threw it over the top to [Jaylen Brown], and he caught it and laid it in. But Brad, the Al Horford play, he just knew—I remember I was at the block and he knew Philly was switching everything. So, whoever set the pick for me, I ran to the corner, their man switched on me, and Al set a pick for [Brown] so that made [Joel] Embiid switch, and [Brown] ran to the other side of the court so we wanted Embiid away from the basket. And we knew, once they switched, he was going to be on top of them. So he said, “All you gotta do, Al, is seal them. You’ll be wide open.” And when it worked just how he said it was going to work, I was like, “Wow. That was crazy.” Like, everything worked exactly how he said it was going to work, and it won us a game.”
This play has no justice without the context. The Celtics had smashed past the Philadelphia 76ers in Game 1 and done so again in Game 2, taking a two-game lead to Philly, who finally thought it was time to answer back with a win at home.
This loss took the air out of the Sixers, who now faced a 3-0 hole, and while they avoided elimination in Game 4, they still went home rather quickly against an undermanned squad that took the series 4-1.
Stevens exposed the Sixers' defense, which proved a tough act — not only as a third seed in the East, but as a team that had won 20 of its last 21 games coming into the series, including a 16-game win streak to finish off the regular season.
