In four of their first six years together, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown led the Celtics to four Eastern Conference Finals appearances and got within two wins of an NBA title. Yet that wasn’t enough to keep critics from questioning whether they could win together.
They squashed that narrative in their first season while sharing the floor in their primes, leading Boston to the Eastern Conference Finals for the fifth time in seven years before breaking through to Banner 18.
As the duo dealt with questions about their friendship off the court or their ability to co-exist at a championship level on it, their head coach, Joe Mazzulla, eviscerated the contrived narratives Tatum and Brown have tolerated for years.
“I think it’s unfair to both of them,” voiced the Celtics’ second-year head coach. “I think it’s stupid that people have to use those two guys’ names and (to) use information that they don’t know to create clickbait so that they can stay relevant.
“And it’s very unfair that those two get compared; two completely different people, they’re two completely different players, they’re great teammates, they love each other, and they go about winning, and they go about their process in different ways. Why (must) they have to be always lumped together — I think (that it) is unfair, and people just use it for their own relativity.”
Tatum and Brown’s teammate, Sam Hauser, also stuck up for the star tandem, echoing Mazzulla’s sentiments to co-host Macon Gunter in an appearance on “Green Light with Chris Long,” a Yote House Media production.
“People just want a narrative and something to talk about. Whether it’s real or not, people are gonna create one. And I mean, those guys have won a lot of games and playoff games in their careers. I don’t know what they can say now that we got to the mountaintop and those guys played the way they did. So, you know, there’s no animosity in the locker room at all or in the personal lives. So, just two really stand-up guys who are selfless, and I think that kind of is viewed as passive, I guess, in a way, which is unfortunate.”
