The summer keeps getting better and better for Jayson Tatum. After helping lead the Celtics to their 18th championship with a 4-1 series win over the Dallas Mavericks, Tatum then signed a five-year, $314 million supermax contract extension and joined Team USA for the Paris Olympics later this summer.
Now, the 26-year-old has been named a cover athlete of the popular video game NBA 2K25.
NBA 2K announced on X the three cover stars. Tatum will be on the cover for the standard edition, while Las Vegas Aces star, A’ja Wilson, is the cover athlete for the WNBA edition. The third edition is the Hall of Fame edition and the cover athlete for that is Vince Carter. Both Tatum and Wilson will feature on the All-Star edition together.
On ‘The Old Man and The Three’ which was hosted by Sue Bird, Tatum spoke about being on the cover.
“I had a unique experience, it was on my birthday… Deuce had a bag and he said ‘Happy Birthday’ and I opened it and [it said] Congrats you’re on the cover of 2K,” Tatum said. “I got teary-eyed, I cried a little bit. I feel like I’m very blessed and fortunate that when I was younger I had so many dreams and goals and things I wanted to check off. It’s like I’m experiencing those things in real time. I grew up at my mom’s house playing 2K with my best friends and my cousins and dreaming about being in the game one day, and then being on the cover. For that moment to come true, I cried a little bit. I was just so overwhelmed and happy that something I dreamed about came true.”
Tatum averaged 26.9 points, 8.1 rebounds, and 4.9 assists across the regular season to help Boston clinch the number one seed which saw them have home-court advantage across the playoffs. For Wilson, last season she led the Aces to a 34-6 record and capped off the season with another championship, winning back-to-back titles. Wilson scored 22.8 points per game last season on a star-studded team, but this year she’s already making strides averaging 27 points per game and is the leading scorer in the WNBA.
Vince Carter announced his retirement from the NBA in 2020 and this year will be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. The Brooklyn Nets announced that Carter’s jersey will be retired this season, meaning no Nets player will ever wear the number 15 jersey.
Jayson Tatum joins an exclusive list of 2K cover athletes and is the fourth Celtic to feature as a cover athlete. The most recent Celtic to grace the cover of NBA 2K was Kyrie Irving who was the cover star for 2K18. Despite being on the cover of 2K18, Irving was named the cover star after his season with the Cleveland Cavs, however, that summer he was traded to Boston and 2K updated the cover accordingly.
Before Irving, Larry Bird was on the 2K12 in a special edition where customers could pick their cover athletes between Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Bird.
Without being traded to the team or having a retired cover athlete, the last Celtic player to earn 2K honors with what they did for Boston was Kevin Garnett. Garnett was the cover-athlete for NBA 2K9 after his historic season winning Banner 17 after his first season with Boston.
Tatum is now with Team USA in Las Vegas prepping for the Paris Olympics where Tatum can cap off his already amazing summer with a gold medal.
