Recently, former Cleveland Cavaliers small forward and NBA analyst Richard Jefferson was seen in an advertisement with Boston Celtics superstar Jayson Tatum to promote the Hisense X NBA2K collaboration. In the ad video shared by Jayson Tatum on his Instagram, RJ’s “only goal on the set” was to convince Tatum that, “at some point in his career, I [Richard Jefferson] was better than him”.
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RJ won a Championship with the Cavs in 2016, while the 25-year-old Celtics star has yet to add this accomplishment to his name. Even though RJ is 43 now and can not play one-on-one at this age, he decided to take on Tatum in “a little 2K”.
Confident about his chances at defeating him inside the game, Jefferson called out Tatum in a classic ‘The Warriors’ fashion, “Jayson, Come out to play”. Both the SFs grabbed their controllers and showed off their skills, RJ with a dunk and Tatum with an ankle breaker on his opponent.
Meanwhile, when Tatum was asked about his chances before the game, “How bad would you beat RJ if you were to play him today?”, he replied confidently, “I would kick RJ’s a**”.
Subsequently, Jefferson even went on to compare the different versions of him and Tatum at some point in their careers, trying to find an age where he was better than the Celtics star. Like, RJ at 23 and Tatum at 20, and RJ at 27 and Tatum at 19. However, Tatum did not seem convinced by any of the comparisons and believed that he was better in every single matchup between the age differentials.
However, there’s no doubt that RJ was an underrated small forward even though he contributed heavily to the New Jersey Nets squad. He even accumulated praise from Tim Duncan during his prime.
Tim Duncan felt RJ and the Nets could have defeated his Spurs in 2003
During his time with the then-New Jersey Nets, Jefferson averaged 17.4 points and 5.4 rebounds in the 489 games that he played for them. This was probably the best phase of his career, even though he had to concede the Championship against the San Antonio Spurs led by Tim Duncan.
The 2016 NBA champion even claimed that Duncan felt that the Nets could have edged out the mighty Spurs. He added, “I asked him, ‘What’d you think your chances were?’ He [Duncan] said, ‘I thought it was about 50-50 going into that series.’ Tim knew that they had to play really, really well to beat us.”
However, when comparing with Jayson Tatum’s stature in the NBA thus far, it feels like the Celtics star is en route to becoming one of the best small forwards in the league, alongside the likes of DeMar DeRozan and Kawhi Leonard. Seven seasons into the NBA, Tatum averages 22.6 points and 7.0 rebounds.
In recent years, the Missouri kid has shown greatness comparable to that of LeBron James, when it comes to his playoff numbers. Last season, he averaged 27.2 points in playoff games coupled with 10.5 rebounds per game, which shows his ability to play off the glass, on both sides of the court. Even though RJ seems confident that he was better in his prime than Tatum in his rookie year, the Celtics star seemed ahead in the race showing some excellent plays on the 2k court.
