Boston Celtics: Ranking all 5 starters for the 2021-22 season

Boston Celtics starters ranked: 1. SF Jayson Tatum

Jayson Tatum is one of the best young scorers and players in the entire NBA. He should be the best starter in Boston for years to come and the team will go as far as the superstar is able to take them.

En route to his second straight All-Star trip last year, Tatum averaged 26.4 points per game for the year, his first time finishing in the top ten in the NBA. Unsurprisingly, he took a lot of shots to get to that mark, finishing in the top 20 in both two-point and three-point makes. He did miss 713 shots, the fourth-most in the league.

Tatum’s high usage is also leading to an unsurprising turnover problem. He averaged 2.7 turnovers per game last year and his 171 turnovers placed him in the top 20 in the league for the first time in his career.

Doesn’t matter. Tatum’s ability as a creator and a scorer dwarfs everything else about his game. He hit over 50 percent of his two-point attempts for the first time last year and still managed to shoot 38.6 percent from three, below his usual mark but still enough to make him proficient from all areas of the court.

One of the biggest concerns about Tatum is something that can’t really be seen or understood quite yet. The superstar battled COVID in January but was still struggling with his breathing and after-effects from the virus months later, symptoms similar to those with long-haul COVID. He’s now vaccinated and hopefully recovering more fully from the virus.

A global pandemic is the only thing that can slow down Tatum on his rise to being one of the league’s best (even that couldn’t do the trick, as he averaged 30.6 points per game in the playoffs). Boston is in good hands with Jayson Tatum leading the charge.