Don't worry about Jayson Tatum

Maybe some people are worried about the Boston Celtics and maybe they have some pretty valid reasons to be upset. A prime example of this would be them being 20th in the league in scoring right now. OK. That’s a problem. And some people might want to pin this problem on individuals.

Jayson Tatum, in particular, has not played well lately, so he can be someone to catch some flak for this. That said, this is not the time to worry that he’s a bust and that the C’s should cut him or anything. The only thing anyone should be cutting right now when it comes to Tatum is some slack.

Not everyone is going to be awesome at what they do all the time. Not everyone can be perfect all the time. We all know people who have forgotten anniversaries, their dog’s birthday and really important events like that. It doesn’t make them terrible people, it just means they messed up. And Tatum has kind of been messing up this month.

The problem a lot of people have is that their expectations are so dang high here. Remember last season? Yes. Remember how Jaylen Brown was a rookie? Yes. Remember how we made sure to set the expectations low for him and he really didn’t play all that much? Remember that? That worked out pretty well for the Celtics in the end. Now, you could easily argue that Tatum will be a more talented player than Brown when it is all said and done and that is why he is in the starting lineup. But also, he is 19 years old. There’s high school athletes who are 19. He’s very young.

A lot of this too has to do with the Celtics failures as a team. They lost four straight including two nail-biters. Whenever something goes wrong--throughout history--people have looked for an individual or a group to blame for their problems. Keep in mind this is a team sport and Tatum really lifted the team in December when he won NBA Rookie of the Month.

There’s other guys in the lineup who are capable of picking up the slack and let’s be honest, the Celtics wouldn’t have picked Tatum third overall if he wasn’t good.