Pulling this exchange over from the Cavs series thread because I woke up thinking about this and was going to get something in this direction started anyway
He needs to shoot better but he’s doing everything else well.
You could've said the same thing for Ben Simmons.
I'm being hyperbolic, but you get my point
I don't know what hyperbolic means, but I think Ben Simmons isn't a horrible comp for what's changed about Tatum's game over the last few years, and I don't mean that as flip criticism
The guy came into the league as a shooter, and the knock on him that first year or two on those Kyrie teams was that he just looked for his own shot and our whole offense was 'my turn, your turn.' A few years in Jackie Mac (if I remember right) asked on air "How do Tatum and Brown make each other better?" and the whole narrative in the sports media started to turn from 'wow, look at his potential!' to 'are they going to reach their potential?' People started to look at Tatum like he was a modern version of Michael Redd or Rashard Lewis. If he wasn't hitting threes, what was the point?
Fast forward to this year's playoff run and go through the stat sheets. Tatum is stuffing them with all the non-shooting stuff-- rebounds, blocks, assists. Most possessions on the court he's drawing all the defensive attention and then make great reads on his passes. Christ, if there was a stat for 'most screens that resulted in a made FG' Tatum probably would have led the team in that stat for game 1 against the Cavs.
He's doing all the things Jackie was talking about all those years ago. And I can't tell if that sound I'm hearing is the goalposts being hoisted up and moved off somewhere else. Or maybe a bunch of people still have this idea in their head that Tatum's value is as a shooter. If he's not hitting threes, what's the point?
Tatum's game last night felt like it was in the ballpark of 'what would you get from a not mentally-messed-up-Ben-Simmons-if-that-guy-tried-to-hit-outside-shots'. And the thing is: that guy is a really useful player!
Of course, the good news is that Tatum is actually a good outside shooter, even if last night wasn't his night. So we get something better.
Also, I can't really keep up with the volume of stuff that's posted over here --> apologies if someone has already said all this and I'm not giving them credit