He started to make shots every which way-putting his head down and driving to the rim, spinning to the basket, hitting step-back threes.
Shortly after that, he bobbed with the ball on the baseline before jackknifing into a fadeaway: shades of Kobe.
A few minutes into the first quarter, Tatum carried the ball up the court, then suddenly accelerated, changing directions and cutting through the defense, before soaring for a two-handed dunk. On Sunday afternoon, the Celtics and the 76ers played a decisive Game Seven. Tatum hugs his teammates with obvious affection. Bryant famously feuded with his teammates. Even on a fast break, he seems somehow unhurried. Tatum, at his best, makes things seem easy. Bryant projected a terrifying intensity, on and off the court. But, despite the influence and the adulation, Tatum has always struck me as different from Bryant in a fundamental way. But if not, shoot it.”)Ĭertain aspects of Tatum’s game are a carbon copy of his hero’s: the smooth spin moves, the quick crossovers, the deft touch, the unmistakable shiver. (“Shoot every time,” Tatum remembered Bryant telling him in Los Angeles. This didn’t sit well with everyone, particularly when, during the following season, Tatum seemed to have picked up some of Kobe’s outdated habits, such as a fondness for long two-pointers-shots now scorned for their inefficiency.
The summer after Tatum’s spectacular rookie season, the show featured him, and Tatum then went to Los Angeles to work out with Bryant, honing some of the older star’s signature moves. After Bryant retired, he created an ESPN series, “Detail,” which closely analyzed the moves of particular players. 2 than he was that Philadelphia had passed on him with the first pick. draft, by the Lakers’ longtime rivals, the Boston Celtics, he seemed possibly more miffed that Bryant’s old team had not taken him at No. When Tatum was picked third in the 2017 N.B.A. Tatum fashioned his fadeaway from repeat viewing of Bryant’s YouTube clips. But no one seems to have lionized him quite like Tatum, who has said that he spent days watching videos of Bryant’s jab step on a loop. He was their icon, what Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan were to earlier generations. Many of the N.B.A.’s younger players grew up idolizing Bryant. Tatum, in last week’s Game Six, finished five for twenty-one. Finals, Bryant famously shot six for twenty-four, as his team, the Los Angeles Lakers, clinched the championship. He finished with nineteen points, nine rebounds, and six assists, leading the Celtics to an almost miraculous 95–86 comeback. Then, in the game’s final four minutes and fourteen seconds, he hit four three-pointers. On Thursday, Tatum missed fourteen of his first fifteen field-goal attempts, including his first six attempts beyond the three-point arc. He learned that from Kobe-terrible advice, really. Tatum has recalled telling his mother that he had no backup plan in case his basketball career didn’t work out. I thought of another childhood exchange between Tatum and his mother. First Team for the second consecutive season, did not score a field goal in the first half. Tatum, who had just been named to the All-N.B.A. The 76ers were up 3–2 in the series, needing only one win to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals.
#Crazy magic icon series#
I thought about Tatum’s obsession with Kobe Bryant last Thursday, during Game Six of the second-round playoff series between the Boston Celtics, Tatum’s team, and the Philadelphia 76ers. Bryant, who was famous for his fierce competitiveness and supreme self-confidence, never would have said that he couldn’t be better than anybody. But I’ve always found it funny, too, because it seemed so distant from Bryant’s own mindset. “It didn’t even make sense to me.” The story is sweet, in the way that childhood infatuations can be. “I was like, Can’t nobody be better than Kobe!” Tatum told Slam magazine. Once, she said that he should dream of being better than Bryant. His mother would tell him that he shouldn’t want to be another person, that he should try to be the best version of himself. As a kid, Tatum used to say that he wanted to be Kobe Bryant, the N.B.A. There’s a story that Jayson Tatum and his mother, Brandy Cole-Barnes, have told several times.
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