Over the seven seasons Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have performed collectively for the Boston Celtics, they’ve confronted all kinds of skepticism about their match collectively as two ballhandling wings. Both had been various levels of nice at totally different occasions, however did their ability units overlap an excessive amount of to construct a championship group round them as a pair?
The Celtics’ 2024 NBA championship win solutions that query with a definitive “no,” however there have been actual questions in regards to the pairing’s match collectively over their near-decade as a duo, in addition to calls from media and fans alike to commerce Brown. Instead, the Celtics (considerably controversially) regularly doubled down on the twosome, most just lately by giving Brown probably the most profitable contract in NBA historical past final summer season.
Doing so might look like the straightforward name with the good thing about hindsight, however within the aftermath of the confetti falling, because the Celtics celebrated their 18th championship in franchise historical past and Brown lofted his NBA Finals MVP, there was a stat on the published for anybody watching at residence that demonstrated simply how unprecedented Boston’s endurance with the Brown and Tatum duo was (as captured by Tim Bontemps of ESPN):
For Tatum and Brown, the 107 video games they performed collectively earlier than successful the title are probably the most by a duo previous to successful their first championship in NBA historical past.
That’s fairly the astounding factoid, and it exhibits how uncommon it’s for any two NBA gamers to
- be ok to justify retaining collectively that lengthy, interval, and…
- be ok to keep up religion in regardless of not having gained a title collectively but.
It stays to be seen if this report will ever be damaged, however given the fixed roster churn of as we speak’s NBA, it appears unlikely. Maybe Brown and Tatum’s long-awaited success will persuade extra GMs to stay affected person with numerous star pairings, however this in any other case appears primed to be a report Brown and Tatum can maintain collectively for a very long time.
