Jayson Tatum Offers a Solid Explanation For Not Picking Up Jaylen Brown’s Call

Jaylen Brown is normally celebrated as a top-15 player in the NBA and a community leader. But unfortunately, this week he’s had a pity party hosted for him after a livestream fail in which he called five teammates to see if they would pick up, and none did.

Compounding Brown’s misery is the fact that Jeff Teague of the Club 520 podcast took up the same challenge shortly after Brown did it yielded vastly different results. While Brown’s own teammate of eight years Jayson Tatum didn’t pick up for him, he did pick up for Teague, someone with whom he’d played less than a season together.

To paraphrase I Love Lucy,’ Tatum, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.’

Tatum was interviewed by Ashley Nicole Moss of CBS Sports yesterday, and she asked him about not picking up for Brown. Just as Tatum has become adept at deftly beating a double-team, his rational explanation should get him out of hot water with Brown.

“Listen, I respond. I answer the phone, I text people back,” Tatum said. “JB even said it afterwards. JB got a new number and didn’t tell any of his teammates that he had a new number. So I had my phone in my hand, and I seen this unfamiliar number come across my phone. I don’t answer numbers I don’t know, but if I knew it was JB, yes, I would have answered the phone,” he added.

People now have to assume this is true, otherwise it’s going to backfire big time for Tatum. If it is, though, what is Brown doing? People don’t like answering their phones to begin with, so to get a new number and not tell anybody, then try a challenge like this, is just crazy.

The whole challenge is to see if your friends will pick up when they know it’s you. If they have no idea who’s calling them, it kind of makes the whole thing moot.

Brown and Tatum have built great chemistry over their long time as Celtics teammates, so we should take Tatum at his word. They won a title together two years ago, although this season will be unique in that Tatum is expected to miss most of it with the torn Achilles he suffered against the Knicks in the playoffs.

That will leave Brown to carry the team along with Derrick White, although it’s notable that Tatum said during an appearance on First Take yesterday that he’s working as hard as he can to get back this season.

With the Eastern Conference in a weakened state, if Brown and White can keep the Celtics in the hunt, a Tatum return before the playoffs could make the Celtics real contenders again. You could say the Celtics need him to … answer the call.