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The Parquet Report · Player focus

What Sixteen Games Told Us About Tatum, and What They Didn't

Gaudy per-game numbers, a thin sample, and a shooting split that raises more than it answers.

By the Celtics Nightly Desk · Monday, September 21

Tatum averaged 21.8 points, 10.0 rebounds and 5.3 assists in 16 games last season, running a 29.0 percent usage rate with 54.1 percent true shooting. He enters camp with a knee injury on his left leg and no clear line yet on when that workload resumes.

Jayson Tatum of the Celtics
Jayson Tatum. Photo: The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
1

Sixteen games produced an All-NBA stat line, but the sample was thin.

Tatum's 21.8 points, 10.0 rebounds and 5.3 assists came in barely a fifth of a season. The efficiency held up: 54.1 percent true shooting on a 29.0 percent usage rate, the kind of workload-to-output ratio Boston can build a season around, if the games pile up past sixteen this time.

2

The three-point shot lagged the rest of his shooting.

He hit 32.9 percent from three on 8.9 attempts a game, well off his 82.3 percent at the free-throw line. The gap between the two says his touch was intact and his form from range was not, at least across those sixteen games. It does not say why.

3

The contract keeps climbing whether the games come or not.

Tatum is owed $58.5M this season, rising to $62.8M, then $67.1M, then a $71.4M player option in 2029-30. Every step assumes the version of him that posted a 10.5 net rating last season, not the one limited to sixteen games.

4

What he needs this season is games, not adjustments.

Last season's numbers already clear the bar Boston needs from its top scorer; what they don't cover is volume. He is listed with a knee injury on his left leg entering camp, with the preseason game at the Cavaliers on October 8 the next checkpoint. A full season at anything close to that rate settles the only question left open.

Is Jayson Tatum injured entering training camp?

Yes. He is listed with a knee injury on his left leg, with a projected return in early October, before Boston's first preseason game on October 8.

How did Tatum play last season?

Across 16 games he averaged 21.8 points, 10.0 rebounds and 5.3 assists, with 54.1 percent true shooting and a 29.0 percent usage rate.

By the Celtics Nightly Desk, written from the club's data and the reports on file, with every name and number checked against them. How the desks work.

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