Jayson Tatum’s superstar status back on trial as troubling playoff trend continues

Before this Celtics vs. Knicks series began, I wrote that New York “arguably” has the best player in this series. With how things have gone, New York taking a 2-0 lead in the most improbable of ways, it feels as though we can drop the “arguably” qualifier and just hand Jalen Brunson his flowers.

That’s not a hot take. And it’s not just based on this series, either. Brunson is in the highest tier of superstars, even acknowledging the strange reluctance there is to officially stamp him with such status.

There has long been a similar phenomenon happening with Jayson Tatum, the only guy in this series with a case against Brunson, and who has also, despite being on his way to his fourth straight first-team All-NBA nod, found himself consistently bumping into the highest superstar ceiling. 

The masses just haven’t been ready to let him break through that last level. Who knows why? Perhaps because he plays on a such a sum-of-its-parts superteam, a narrative that surely gained steam on the back of the same lazy “he didn’t even win Finals MVP!” narrative that stuck to Stephen Curry for years. 

Tatum isn’t as efficient as some of the more universally recognized superstars, but he also does much more than a lot of them. He’s an outstanding rebounder and defender and has become a pretty top-shelf playmaker. He’s also, for the most part, become a much more reliable finisher on shorter shots, which plagued him for most of his career. Taken as a total package in full and proper context, Tatum is up there with just about anyone — this terrible showing against the Knicks so far notwithstanding. 

But superstar conversations tend to get whittled down to the fine print. The Jordan vs. LeBron debate is often settled by two guys in a bar posing the question: “Game on the line, who do you want taking the shot?” For a good amount of people, that’s really all it boils down to. And right now, you would be hard pressed to find any halfway objective observer who wouldn’t choose Brunson over Tatum every day of the week to command his team in the biggest games and moments. 

The numbers more than back this up. On Wednesday, Brunson became the first player in the NBA’s play-by-play era to score at least 83 fourth-quarter points through the first eight games of two different playoff runs (2024 and 2025). Drill down deeper, and over the final five fourth-quarter minutes of Games 1 and 2 of this series, Brunson has outscored Tatum 17-4 and Boston’s entire team 17-13.

Knicks’ Jalen Brunson in elite clutch playoff company after devastating Celtics again in Game 2

Colin Ward-Henninger

All told, Brunson has scored 90 clutch points over the past two postseasons. That’s already the most in a span of two playoff runs since Kobe Bryant in 2009-10, and Brunson has at least four games, and likely more, left to add to that number. 

Meanwhile, Tatum, who is 12 for 43 in this Knicks series overall (including 5 of 20 from 3), has missed eight of 10 shots and all four of his 3-pointers in 19 clutch minutes so far in this postseason. It’s an extension of a regular season in which he shot 6 for 31 from 3 and just 65% from the free-throw line during clutch minutes. 

Last season, even as the Celtics won the championship, Tatum shot just 36% in 110 regular-season clutch minutes and 5 of 17 in the playoffs, including 1 of 7 from 3. In the 2023 Eastern Conference finals, when the Celtics went down 3-0 to the Heat before losing in seven, Tatum shot 23% from 3 for the series. In the 2022 Finals, he shot 36% from the field. 

There’s some context to this. Tatum draws a disproportionate share of every defense’s attention and has to take a lot of tough shots, but he also plays his way into his share of shots that are tougher than they necessarily need to be. 

Still, NBA superstars, rightly or wrongly, aren’t typically evaluated in deep or even — depending on your viewpoint — proper context. It’s only about bottom-line production. And Tatum’s production, or lack thereof, in the biggest moments of this postseason has not been an anomaly. Rather, it’s the continuation of a trend that dates back years, as evidenced by the playoff clutch numbers you see below. 

It’s strange that Tatum’s superstar status seems to still be stuck in something of a probationary period, like a utility superstar almost — in the lineup a lot of days but without a penciled-in position. Any slump, surely one at the wrong time, can land him back on the bench, where, incidentally, he spent the bulk of his time with Team USA during this summer’s Olympic gold medal run. 

Again, that “demotion” requires context. On a team with that much talent — a team for which Brunson wasn’t even chosen, by the way — Tatum wasn’t needed to do all the things he does for the Celtics. He was only needed, really, to shoot, and Steve Kerr just decided that Devin Booker was a more trustworthy shooter than Tatum. 

It’s hard to argue with the decision. Tatum didn’t shoot well in the minutes he saw with Team USA, and as you can see in the table above, he hasn’t really shot that well in the biggest moments of his NBA career. As the struggles have continued into this postseason, where they have become downright glaring, it feels like Tatum is right back on trial for his superstar standing. It seems there is only room for a handful of guys at any one time in this conversation and, at least at the moment, Brunson has taken Tatum’s place.