On a night when the Celtics were down three starters and two rotation players, you would have thought that Jayson Tatum would have the ball in his hands all night, take 30-plus shots, and need a monster game to pull out a win on the backend of a back-to-back.
And sure, scoring 35 points, grabbing seven rebounds, and hitting 5-of-11 from behind the arc is considered a strong outing, but it wasn’t exactly the heliocentric performance you might have expected.
“I think that’s important. I think that’s good,” head coach Joe Mazzulla said after a question about Tatum came at the end of his postgame presser and rather than at the top.