Every great player has a few legacy games, and before Game 6 on Friday, Jayson Tatum had a couple that nearly qualified.
There was the time he scored 50 points in the play-in game, but that season was doomed by the time the play-in game rolled around. There was the valiant 50-point effort against the Nets that followed a few weeks later, but the Nets won that series handily, which erased the memory of it. There was the Dunk-On-LeBron game, but the Cavaliers won.
Friday’s game was a no-doubter. Facing elimination at the hands of perhaps the greatest basketball player on the planet, Tatum squared up with Giannis Antetokounmpo and won — a blistering 46-point performance that lifted the Celtics to a 108-85 victory and sent the series back to Boston for a decisive Game 7.