Let's Not Forget About Jayson Tatum's Defense
Last night, Jayson Tatum controlled the entire game against the New York Knicks. In a rare display, he didn't sit down after his customary breather halfway through the first quarter. He came back in with 2:17 left in the first, and wouldn't sit down again until there was just left 1:09 left in the fourth quarter and the game well in hand. In between, he constantly made the right play, passing out of or driving around weak double teams with ease. But it was his defense that I want to spotlight this morning.
In the third quarter, the Knicks made a little run. The same thing happened Thursday in Chicago, and the same thing has happened to this Boston team for years. A team makes a run in the third quarter, the C's let go of the rope, and it either becomes a dogfight or the C's cave. For the most part, that has not happened this year. It's been awhile since you heard about Boston's third-quarter woes. Last night was another perfect example of how this team is built different.
It started with the score tied at 64. The Knicks had come out with some momentum, and quickly tied things up. Tatum boxes out his man after Donte DiVencenzo takes a three. DiVencenzo knows he missed it right away, and follows the shot, which careens right to him, and allows him to blow by Kristaps Porzingis for what should be an easy layup. Except that Tatum is still under the hoop. He reads the play, slides over, and blocks the shot clean. Porzingis picks it up and Isaiah Hartenstein foolishly pushes him out of bounds. Play over.
On that play, Tatum was guarding fellow power forward Precious Achiuwa. Two minutes later, he was guarding Hartenstein (he had guarded him on the prior possession as well, and grabbed the rebound.) Hartenstein, sensing a mismatch, called for the ball. He got the ball. But Tatum stayed home, not allowing Hartenstein an angle, and Hartenstein – who is a great player but not someone you would call a shot creator – gets overzealous and travels.
A few minutes later, at 5:09, the Knicks called a time out. Jrue Holiday had just hit a wide-open corner three to give the C's a 13-point lead, their largest of the game. He then was subbed out to get a breather, which is his usual time to come out of the game in the third quarter (as well as the first). So, who's going to point guard Jalen Brunson? That's right, Jayson Tatum.
You don't really get to see that defense in the highlight clip, but Brunson had tried to take Tatum off the dribble. When he realized he was getting nowhere, he threw it to DiVencenzo in the corner with just five seconds left on the shot clock. DiVencenzo does the best he can with it, beating Derrick White into the lane for a floater, but it doesn't drop. Tatum would make a contested lay-up down the other end. On the next possession, he grabbed the defensive rebound and made a quick outlet pass that helped get Brown a lay-up to push the lead to 17 points.
Recapping these six minutes of game action, Tatum came off his defender for a block, covered a center who then travelled, and then forced a point guard who famously can always find an angle for a shot to pass without finding an angle for a shot. Three possessions, zero points allowed. In this six-minute stretch, the Knicks scored just five points, while the Celtics poured in 22. Boston irrevocably took control of the game during these six minutes, and it was Tatum who led the charge with his defense (and he still put in work on the offensive side, as he put in both of his shots in that span for five points, and chipped in two assists as well).
I think the play against Brunson is emblematic of Tatum's defensive efforts. It didn't end with a shot or a turnover, so there's nothing in the box score to denote the good defense he played. None of them made NBA.com's top plays of Saturday reel. You can't even see it in the NBA.com replay, because it was before the shot! Tatum just quietly does his job better than his opponents. But it gets tallied up eventually. By Basketball-Reference's Defensive Win Shares, Tatum ranks sixth in the NBA, in a virtual tie with Denver's Nikola Jokić and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. By NBA.com's Defensive Win Shares, Tatum also ranks sixth in the NBA. Let's take a look at how the other noted MVP candidates stack up in these categories:
The only other player in the top 10 in both categories is SGA. In a related story, I think he's the only other legitimate MVP candidate besides Tatum.
The telling thing to me is just how much credence defense is given at all. Baseball statistics are where sabermetrics/advanced stats/statistical nerdery was born, before filtering to basketball, football, soccer, and hockey. In baseball, where my prior expertise most lied, defensive stats are not given the same weight as offensive stats for two reasons. First, developing those statistics is harder, as the outfield and foul territory are not uniform from ballpark to ballpark, not to mention other intricacies like outfield wall height. Second, baseball defenders change their positioning frequently, and also aren't defending on every play. Especially in today's three-true-outcomes centric game, a baseball defender can go innings and sometimes even games without having to play defense at all.
The same can not be said for basketball. Players have to play defense the entire time they're on the court, and the court is the same in every arena, making it far easier to compare a player's activity and map it to their peers. And yet, defensive stats are not weighted in the same fashion as offensive stats. You can see that clear as day in the Basketball-Reference leaderboards for Offensive and Defensive Win Shares:
As you can see, the highest-rated defender is only akin to the 14th-best offensive player (ironically, Tatum). Top offense is given much more weight than top defense. Logically, this makes no sense. The top player in OWS is essentially double that of DWS. But on the court, it is just as hard to stop a bucket as it is to score a bucket. In fact, this season, where teams are scoring 130+ and 140+ points on a seemingly routine basis, I'd argue that defensive prowess has never been more at a premium. It's certainly not half as important as offense is. And yet, that is not what is reflected in the statistics, and not how the MVP race will be judged.
Smart people I follow push back against the "best player on the best team should win MVP." Zach Lowe did it on Friday on his podcast, saying that Tatum doesn't have a statistical argument over the other four MVP candidates. Defensive Win Shares says otherwise, but because the defensive stats aren't taken as seriously, you see writers – even smart writers like Lowe – fawning over Luka Dončić instead, when his defensive effort leaves a lot to be desired.
So defense in general is not taken as seriously. But it's not just that Tatum plays defense at a level better than most players in the league, it's that he does it against any player on the court, in any situation. His defensive prowess plus his defensive flexibility is extraordinary and unique. SGA can't cover centers. Giannis and Jokić can't cover point guards. Luka has a hard time consistently guarding anybody, and certainly can't guard quick/fast players. Tatum covers anybody and everybody. The only two players I've ever seen give Tatum fits on defense are Jokić and Joel Embiid, and that puts him in a class with just about every other person alive on this planet.
I'm going to hold my powder on making a real MVP breakdown until the season is a little closer to its finish. It's easier to discount Tatum when the C's have a six-game lead on the number two spot in the East. It's grown to eight games, and if it stays that way or continues to grow, people are going to have to really do some mental gymnastics to not vote for Tatum at that point. We'll see. As I noted before the season, March has two separate five-game road trips, and is no picnic. It's why having an eight-game lead now is huge.
Jayson Tatum is one of the best players in the NBA, but he is constantly slotted a spot or three lower than he should be because the media doesn't properly value his defensive contributions. There's also – to be clear – the lingering residual stink from his performance in the 2022 NBA Finals, which was not to his standards. But my hope is that as the Celtics pave their way to the best record in the NBA, that Tatum's defensive prowess and flexibility gets more shine in the spotlight. It made all the difference last night in New York.