Jayson Tatum, the 19-year-old small forward from Duke, was selected as the Nr. 3 overall pick in the 2017 NBA draft. This guy basically came out of nowhere, at least compared to Lonzo Ball and his infamous father, or Markelle Fultz (later Nr.1 pick), but now there is no basketball fan in the world who would dare to doubt his talent (there aren't a lot of players in the league right now, have never been, who enjoy the ultimate, unanimous sympathy of basketball fans: the unofficial list would probably include players, like Tatum, Antetokounmpo, Porzingis, and Anthony Davis). What’s more, thanks to him and his fellow youngsters in the Celtics roster, especially his athletic running mate, Jaylen Brown, the “Boston Celtics-Bandwagon” is officially a thing again and that’s cool! We need a good Boston team in the league, given the fact that there are not many historic franchises in the NBA.

Tatum embodies the future, the hope, and lays down the fundamentals of an organization which strives to be a title contender for the upcoming decade following the post-Warriors era (couldn’t we just skip this part, and jump there?) so it is worth taking a closer look at this guy who has the chance to become the face of his team and the NBA someday.

It perfectly illustrates how much he means to the team and how much they trust him now that when rumours started circling about Kyrie Irving's potential departure at the end of the 2018/2019 season, the general atmosphere in Boston was pretty much... unchanged. Of course, fans wouldn’t be happy, but no one in town would go crazy about Irving leaving the team which tells us a lot about the load of young talent in Boston. How many teams do we know in the league who can say that “ You know, we gonna start the next season with or without Kyrie, the guy for whom we just traded a high draft pick and the biggest hero in recent memory (Isaiah Thomas), but either way, I think we gonna be kinda alright (shrug).”

Draft

So, imagine this: Danny Ainge, the cold-blooded master of puppets, just traded down from the No.1 pick to No.3 in the 2017 draft since he was in love with Tatum’s old school, kind of throwback style of play bringing back memories of watching Carmelo Anthony or Paul Pierce. At Duke, he simply loved catching and jab stepping, facing up in the mid post, and the most common category for his offensive sets was isolation, which is weird as it was a Mike Krzyzewski  team. At that time, Philly was more than happy to trade up to be able to select Markelle Fultz who was considered to be the final (master-)piece in their team-building puzzle.

When the trade was completed, 76ers former president of basketball operations Bryan Colangelo happy said,

"We are very pleased with the outcome of this trade, which puts us in the enviable position of selecting first overall in consecutive draft years. History suggests that No. 1 has the greatest odds of producing franchise-level talent and we are confident that this year's draft class has that very potential.”

Source: Yahoo! Sports

The situation in which Tatum jumped in is almost too good to be true. Usually, high draft picks are doomed to start their careers in the worst teams possible: no wonder, that’s the idea behind the draft system, to give opportunity to really bad teams to get better by selecting the biggest talents. However, in awful lot of times, these kids instead of improving the team step-by-step, begin to accommodate to poor organisational culture, pick up bad habits and poor mentality on and off the court (khm, Boogie Cousins in Sacramento).

In 2016, Boston happened to win the regular season in the eastern conference which, you know, quite far from being the worst of all. If that’s not enough they’ve had a coach, named Brad “I-pick-up-girls-by-showing-them-my-inbound-plays-on-my-iPad” Stevens. The most general consensus around the league right now is not that our good-old mother planet, the Earth is round (thanks Kyrie), but that Stevens is a freaking strategic mastermind, and probably the best coach in the league.

That being said, let’s see what we have got in our hands:

• a Top5 team with seasoned veterans who can teach you how to win basketball games and fresh young legs helping you out every night,
• a Top2 head coach,
• a winning organisation with a history that is longer than Philly’s losing streak in the 2014/2015 season.
• a GM who is said to have improved their family roster at the age of 14 by trading his own brother

It’s also part of the story that Tatum’s minutes in his rookie year were affected by the horrible injury of Gordon Hayward in the season opening game against the Cavs. 12 minutes into the season, Stevens had to re-calibrate everything and figure out how to distribute the minutes between his players, Brown, Tatum, Morris, and Smart, and set a good balance on the lineups.

Eventually, partly because of the movement-based, ego-sacrificing system of Stevens, partly because of Mitchell and Simmons stealing the show with ridiculous numbers, Tatum came short of the ROY race in the regular season, but according to many, owned the posteason, at least among fellow rookies. This 20-year-old just did this to one of the greatest players of all time with whom he had fan photo a couple of years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PPci3nXFoQ

To do that, man, you better have a shitload of confidence, and... a sort of “mamba” mentality. Isn’t that funny, that the biggest nemesis of Boston, the player who was legendary hated in the Garden, is now working out with the fresh prince of the town, teaching him tricks to kick ass next season? No, probably it isn't funny, just amazingly cool (Jaylen Brown, Jayson’s good buddy, also found a personal trainer in the meantime, some guy named Tracy McGrady).

So what now?

The biggest question for the upcoming season is, of course, what to do if Hayward, the superstar small forward signed huge contract in the previous free agency, (and Irving) fully recovers and is ready to play healthy minutes. It is quite unlikely that the Celtics would jeopardize Tatum’s progress and improvement as a player, and more importantly as a leader by putting him on the sideline or forcing him to take a backseat.

Will Stevens be willing to play his best lineup regardless of traditional positions? In the crunchtime, more likely, given his progressive coaching style and profile, but the main task here is to keep everyone’s happy and give these youngs guys opportunity to get better everyday. It will most likely involve Tatum playing increased minutes at four which requires him to gain some muscle and get stronger, especially for the defensive end.   

Tatum says, they’re going to figure it out, no worries. We don’t worry, we shouldn’t as this Boston Celtics is one of the most fun, exciting, and likable collection of talented individuals and athletes we have seen in years, and that’s a very good thing.