Jayson Tatum has struggled in crunch-time all season long.
Boston needed just one stop to pull off a thrilling road victory in the extra session, siccing Jrue Holiday on Dejounte Murray—who came into Thurday’s game having hit multiple game-winners this season—with the overtime game clock ticking toward zero. Good offense always beats good defense, though, and Murray’s tough pull-up jumper with .1 seconds remaining propelled the Hawks to a heart-stopping 123-122 win.
DEJOUNTE MURRAY CALLS GAME 🚨
He's got 44 points!pic.twitter.com/aUkOG9mqHY
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) March 29, 2024
After the game, Joe Mazzulla was asked what his team was looking for on that failed final play of regulation.
“Gave JT the ball and had him make a play for us,” he said. “He got a shot off, got a good look and it didn’t go.”
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Before Murray drained his third game-winning jumper of 2023-24, Jaylen Brown put the Celtics up one on his own mid-ranger with just over six seconds left.
Did Boston intentionally go away from Tatum, who’s struggled in crunch-time all season, on the game’s penultimate possession? Mazzulla balked at the assumption, noting the stark differences in circumstances of time and score between Tatum’s desperate heave and Brown’s pull-up 17-footer.
“No, those are two different plays,” he said. “That one’s to end the game when you get the last shot, the other one is you’re down one so you draw up a two-for-one play ’cause you want to extend the game. Two completely different situations.”
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Jayson Tatum’s crunch-time struggles persist
Tatum’s labors in the clutch have been a hot-button topic for Boston essentially since the regular season tipped off back in October. The Celtics’ top-ranked offense has regularly devolved into Tatum isolations during the biggest moments of close games, and the team’s best player just hasn’t been able to deliver under that pressure cooker.
After going a perfectly acceptable 3-of-7 and scoring 10 points in the last five minutes of regulation and overtime on Thursday, Tatum is now 22-of-61 in clutch situations this season, good for ugly 36.1% shooting, per NBA.com/stats. Of the 30 players who’ve taken at least 50 shots in crunch-time this season, the only ones shooting a worse percentage than Tatum are Tyrese Maxey and Klay Thompson.
Fortunately for the Celtics, Tatum’s inability to close consistently hasn’t led to inefficient offense late in close games. Boston’s 122.0 offensive rating in the clutch ranks fifth-best in basketball, bucking the burgeoning narrative basketball’s best team—by record and most every statistical measure, at least—can’t score when it needs buckets most.
Does the Celtics’ offense bog down in the clutch occasionally? Absolutely, but they’re hardly the only team to which that dynamic applies. Managing the clock, limiting the chance for a turnover and ensuring you get a shot up at all has always meant one-on-one basketball rules the day in crunch-time.
Boston isn’t much different from any other team in that regard. The problem is that Tatum—averaging 1.06 points per isolation possession this season, in the 79th percentile league-wide—just hasn’t been himself as a mano a mano scorer late in fourth quarters and overtimes. As the playoffs dawn, the Celtics’ hopes of raising their first championship banner since 2008 could rest on Tatum’s ability to break that troubling, perhaps random, trend.
