Knew It All Along: Jayson Tatum-Jaylen Brown Pair An Ace For Boston Celtics

One thing to be said for the American sports media: Generally, they’re very good at self-flagellation, flinging up bad past takes from colleagues and pointing out just how wrong, in retrospect, those takes were.

We can be perhaps a bit too enthusiastic about pointing out our wrongness, however, in an effort to write stories about the vindication of executives or coaches or, most often, players.

That process has been in overdrive this week as the Celtics broke through, with Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum playing key rules, to defeat the Heat in the Eastern Conference finals and earn the pair’s first spot in the NBA’s championship round.

As soon as Boston’s Finals ticket was punched, we were reminded of the inane conversations that went down five or six months ago about the viability of the Brown and Tatum pairing as a legitimate contender.

Indeed, there were those making the case, back when Boston was below .500 (January 21, at 24-25, was the last time that was the case), that the Celtics should ship out Brown because he and Tatum were too similar and had no apparent chemistry.

Thing is, it was a very small minority of media folks who were carrying the break-’em-up flag.

Veteran reporter Jeff Goodman has been a longtime proponent of sending Brown packing and stuck with that early this season.

Bleacher Report’s Jake Fischer also noted, on Sirius XM Radio, that, “I think this is definitely the beginning of the end for the Jayson Tatum-Jaylen Brown pairing.” And, of course, there was former Celtics center Kendrick Perkins, who said back on January 7, “As bad as we all want to see it work, they can’t coexist.”

While those voices got attention, there was never any real consideration given to splitting Brown and Tatum in the Celtics’ front office—it was all just opinion and hypothetical scenarios.

There was far more sentiment against splitting up Tatum and Brown, even as the Celtics scuffled, because they’re both rare NBA talents and it is not easy to collect two on one roster. To wit: