Look, I don’t like Jayson Tatum either. But man, this is probably unfair.
I know why we don’t like the guy. As I think one of us on this site has said before, he went to Duke and he acts like it, with the latter a bigger problem than the former.
He’s mopey.
He’s easy to pick on.
He and Jaylen Brown have never successfully enacted a Jay & Jay buddy routine.
No one has ever seriously accused Jayson Tatum of having that dog in him. The man is dog-less! Jayson Tatum is soft, like Carlos Correa before his injuries, someone who should be better than he is and is held back by a whiny countenance, an entitled visage. It’s not that we hate Jayson Tatum. It’s that we don’t respect him. At all. He isn’t LeBron James, who annoys every ounce of piss out of my bladder but is admittedly a historic basketball talent. He’s Jayson Tatum. The ultimate Subway spokesperson in the post-Jared age.
Still, we are definitely unfair to the guy. Because over two games, we’ve gone from saying, “Damn, I hope the Celtics don’t win this series,” to, “Damn, it would be really funny if Jaylen Brown or Jrue Holiday won Finals MVP.” Even Jason Kidd is getting in on it! Jason Kidd challenged Jayson Tatum this weekend, and Jason Kidd is someone who knows what he’s doing when it comes to the psyches of specific American basketball players. Jason Kidd would not have challenged Jimmy Butler like this. This was calculated. Kidd knew Tatum would hem and haw, like he did when asked about it, not owning it with a laugh and saying, “Hell yeah, Jaylen’s the best player on this team, look at all these things my teammate does for the Boston Celtics,” but also not coming out afterwards and dropping forty while spitting in Kidd’s direction after a third-quarter fracas. Tatum was accused of not being the best player on the Celtics, and Tatum equivocated, because Tatum doesn’t have the balls to prove he’s the best player on the Celtics but he would really like it if everyone could please just call him the best player on the Celtics, please.
There I go again. I can’t not make fun of him. The Celtics could sweep the Mavericks this week, and unless Tatum won MVP we’d all still rip on the man. Even if he does win Finals MVP, we’ll probably call it political or move the goalposts. The guy can’t win. The bullying won’t stop. He might need to burn down Jason Kidd’s house.
Etc.
- Poor Yusei Kikuchi! Every time this guy ends up in the news, he seems a little more a baby deer than the last. First, he (possibly jokingly) told media last September that his neck cramped during a start because he didn’t get his full 14 hours of sleep. Then, yesterday, he accidentally put the hit stick on Tyler Soderstrom as Soderstrom went to catch a pop-up in foul ground at the Oakland Coliseum. Somewhere, John Fisher yelled, “This will never happen in Las Vegas! We will have dugout railings in Las Vegas!” As far as we know, Soderstrom’s fine, and the batter was ruled out, so no real harm was done. Except for that done to Kikuchi’s ego. Eugene Horowitz vibe.
- I missed this last week, but bowl games are evidently starting the same day as Army/Navy? Or so those bowl games think. We’ll see what the CIA has to say about it. The Bay of Boca Raton Bowl Invasion, on its way.
- The U.S. Open’s this week, and I can’t wait to see what crimes that miscreant Scottie Scheffler commits at Pinehurst. Think he shows up wearing the Colin Kaepernick pig socks?
- There is no more Dan Campbell way to break an offseason practice rule than to make players hit too much. Can’t disrespect that.
- Last, prayers up for Marquette, who lost President Michael Lowell yesterday to cancer. Lowell was a beloved figure within Marquette athletics, hiring our guy Shaka Smart and cutting down nets alongside him at Madison Square Garden after the 2023 Big East Tournament. Comfort and peace to those who grieve.
