Jayson Tatum’s near triple double powers the Celtics to Game 2 win

Jayson Tatum is the Celtics‘ best player.

Just Kidding.

If there was a headline coming out of the Celtics’ Game 2 win over the Mavericks on Sunday night, it was that it came in a team effort. Jrue Holiday scored a team-high 26 points. Derrick White made clutch plays on both sides of the ball. Jaylen Brown was again the primary cover on Luka Doncic.

And Tatum was the offensive engine and defensive back stop of Boston taking a 2-0 lead in the NBA Finals.

“It has a lot to do with that I’ve been here before and we didn’t win. We’re so close to what we’re trying to accomplish. Why would I let my ego or my need to score all of the points get in the way of that?,” Tatum said after finishing a rebound shy of a triple double.

“There are going to be times where I need to score. Obviously, I need to shoot better. Gol-ly! We always talk about ‘do whatever it takes for however long it takes.’ If I need to have sixteen potential assists every single night and that’s what puts us in the best position to win and then the other day, I’m the leading scorer, by all means, if that gives us the best chance to win, sign me up.”

Talking heads will point to his scoring stat line in Game 2 — 18 points on 6-of-22 shooting and 1-of-7 from behind the arc — to somehow minimize his effect on the floor (+6, for what it’s worth). But to put his entire game into complete perspective, you have to dig a little deeper into the numbers. Just put Holiday’s game under the microscope.

In Game 1, Tatum led both teams in potential assists with 14 — only five of them led to made field goals. In Game 2, he registered 20 potential assists and half of his twelve dimes were to Holiday, including three for layups and a three-pointer to give the Celtics the lead heading into halftime.

“Every time I take a couple of dribbles, there’s like three people right there. We got a bunch of shooters out there, guys that can space the floor. They kept leaving Jrue open, so it wasn’t like I had to do anything spectacular. It was just a matter of finding the open guy.”

For most of the evening, that open guy was Holiday.

“Honestly, I just got the opportunity,” Holiday told ESPN’s Lisa Salters. “I would say a lot of it was JT. JT was taking it to the basket. They were double teaming him and he was making the right play. I don’t know if he had a triple double…almost, nine rebounds. The way that he played tonight, the way that he led us, getting into the paint, making plays, finding me wide open. It was all about him.”

When we talk about playmakers, there’s a bit of subjectivity that comes with it. For a player like Doncic, there’s a perceived cleverness to his craft with the subtle bump to create space and the manipulation of time as he speeds up and slows down to dizzy his defender.

In Tatum’s case, it’s more deliberate. With a mismatch in front of him, he can outmuscle, outsize, and/or outquick whoever is in front of him. Whether you prefer the trickery of Luka magic or the blunt impact of a Tatum drive, it’s all playmaking, too,

After hitting four threes in the waning moments of Game 6 against the 76ers last year, Tatum humbly called himself one of the best players in the world. Maybe what he’s doing against a very good Dallas defense isn’t exactly “spectacular,” but it’s the kind of stuff that few can on this stage.

“Jayson makes greatness look easy,” head coach Joe Mazzulla said. “He does it in a lot of different ways. He does it on defense. He does it with rebounding. He does it with passing. He does it on screening. He’s a tremendous player and an honor to coach him. He has the ability to affect the game in different ways — we’re a different team.”

For the third consecutive season, Tatum finished First Team All-NBA despite shooting fewer shots and scoring fewer points on a lower usage rate. In place of that point production is a more mature approach for the 26-year-old.

“The emphasis and where he’s grown in the last two years is to take what the defense is giving him and to learn to impact the game in many different ways,” Mazzulla continued.

“Because of the type of team we’ve had, especially this year, he’s seen a bunch of different coverages and he’s seen different matchups because teams have to match up with us. So, coming into a game, it’s kind of similar to a puzzle and he’s done a great job of learning how to solve the puzzle and do different things.

Tonight, with the way that they were rotating and the way that they were defending him, the most important thing was making the right play at the rim. We were able to stay out of transition because our guys made that. I thought he did a tremendous job doing what the game called for.”