Win Or Lose, Tonight's NBA Finals Game 6 Will Be A Well-Read Chapter in the Jayson Tatum Narrative
No Boston Celtics player should be feeling the immense pressure to win tonight and keep their season alive, more than Jayson Tatum who is long overdue for a breakout performance in The Finals.
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You hear players talk all the time about how the next game is the biggest game of their careers, and how each game counts as one win; no more, no less.
But buying into that fallacy is something no one is taking seriously this time of year, not with an NBA title at stake.
Tonight’s game really isn’t that complicated.
If the Celtics win, they live to fight one more day with the series shifting back to the Bay for Game 7.
They lose, and this magical run they have been on this season is over.
For Boston, tonight’s Game 6 matchup is about more than just extending their season. It’s about legacy building, especially when the topic of conversation is about Jayson Tatum.
A member of the All-NBA First Team this season, Tatum has been good in the Finals.
But good, especially this time of year, usually isn’t good enough.
That’s why this game is so important to not just the Celtics, but also Tatum whose leadership for as long as he has been a Celtic, have raised some concerns among Celtics faithful as to whether he’s the right man in leading this team to a championship.
There are few individual accomplishments Tatum has not already achieved, cementing himself among the all-time greats in franchise history in several statistical categories.
But what often separates good Celtics from great ones, is winning championships.
And Boston, which trails 3-2 in the best-of-seven series with Golden State, is a home victory away from evening up the best-of-seven series and forcing a winner-take-all Game 7.
The pressure to win on Boston is palpable, with no one feeling it more than Tatum.
But as we’ve seen throughout his career, during the good and not-so-good teams, his demeanor doesn’t flinch whether it’s a cool breeze or chaos and mayhem.
Even with this season’s success being unexpected following a rocky start, there will absolutely be a contingent of Celtics fans who will come away feeling that Tatum and the rest of the Celtics let them down by not eliminating a Golden State team that, while surely have a certain swagger and confidence about them, have shown more than a few moments of vulnerability that Boston has not been able to capitalize on enough.
And the result has Boston one loss away from having their season end.
The reasons will run the gamut, for sure.
But at the end of the day, it is Tatum who will bear the brunt of most fans’ anger and angst if Boston doesn’t win tonight.
They will point to how he has disappeared in the fourth quarter despite playing more minutes than anyone in the series.
Regardless of what Tatum has done and not done up to this point, the Celtics still have a shot at bringing home Banner 18 and joining some of the greatest basketball luminaries to ever play the game.
“It's definitely something that motivates us,” said Boston’s Marcus Smart. “Not just myself. This team, to be able to do something special and have our names with those guys to do it. It's an honor to even be talked about to have that opportunity. So it's something we definitely think about.”
Jaylen Brown added, “We're looking forward to the challenge. We got to embrace it. Ain't no other way around it. Last game on our home floor to kind of embody our whole season. We're looking to give it everything we got. We are not scared. We do not fear the Golden State Warriors. We want to come out and play the best version of basketball that we can. We know it's a good team over there. We know they've done it before. But we have all the belief in ourselves. We're going to come out and leave it all out there. That's the whole intent.”