Tatum has since spoken about how that sequence affected him, about how he had bother leaving his home for a number of days in its instant aftermath, and about how he finally checked out it as a studying expertise. He had thought he understood that the playoffs have been a grind, he mentioned then, however now he actually knew.
Still, the ghosts from the finals appeared to linger when Boston visited Golden State on Dec. 10 of their first of two conferences this season. In hindsight, Tatum mentioned, the Celtics have been too excited, too anticipating some type of revenge: Tatum struggled, and the Celtics misplaced by 16.
“Everybody wanted to win so bad,” he mentioned.
Before Thursday’s recreation, the Celtics tried to keep up a extra balanced perspective. The gist of their conversations this week, Tatum mentioned, was that one recreation was not going to erase what occurred final season.
“The fact of the matter is, we lost — we lost the championship,” he mentioned. “We can’t go back in time and change that. So we didn’t look at this as a rematch of the finals. It’s just one game against a great team, great players and obviously a great coach. But it’s just one game.”
Tatum stored repeating that phrase — that it was only one recreation — as if he have been making an attempt to persuade himself that it was true. Some of his actions on Thursday indicated in any other case. Consider: He performed 48 minutes. Mazzulla mentioned he had a quick dialog with Tatum about whether or not to depart him within the recreation early within the fourth quarter.
“I looked at him, he looked at me, we kind of said, ‘Yeah,’ and that was it,” Mazzulla mentioned.
Perhaps fatigue performed a task in a couple of of Tatum’s errors. He shot solely 9 of 27 from the sector, although he made up for it in different methods, accumulating 34 factors, 19 rebounds and 6 assists — a stat line that might have made different gamers proud.
Tatum, although, has larger requirements now, and larger targets. On Thursday, his teammates backed him up, one other signal of development for a younger group that continues to maneuver ahead. Sure, it was just one recreation. But even Tatum acknowledged a deeper which means.
“Just trying to put the past behind us,” he mentioned.
Discussion about this post