Boston Celtics: 2017-18 player grades for Jayson Tatum

Strengths

As mentioned earlier, Tatum was already showing signs of being a polished scorer during his days donning the blue and white. For the guys in white and green, that trend continued.

Tatum finished the regular seasons with averages of 13.9 points, 5.0 rebounds and 1.6 assists per game on .475/.434/.826 splits. The league average shooting splits for field goal, 3-point and free throw percentages were .460/.362/.767. For a rookie that had a usage percentage of 19.5, those are pretty impressive numbers.

In the postseason, Tatum’s 3-point percentage (.325) and rebounding average (4.4) took a dip, but the rest of his numbers increased to 18.5 points and 2.7 assists per game, along with a 52.6 field goal percentage. When it’s taken into account that 72.8 percent of his shot attempts were 2-pointers in the postseason, the numbers jump off the page a bit more.

Another strength of Tatum is his ball-handling and dribble penetration abilities. While the amount of turnovers a player has shouldn’t be directly correlated to being a good ball-handler, considering Tatum played a total of 2,438 minutes (third-most among rookies), and finished with only 114 turnovers (and a 1.4 turnovers per game average), that’s not too shabby.

While the play below showcases his scoring ability as well, this is what I’m talking about:

Sorry Tristan Thompson, even David Fizdale couldn’t save you.