After the Boston Celtics lifted their 18th Championship, franchise legend Paul Pierce has been on an epic run to call out all the media narratives against the 2024 NBA Championship team. Rubbing the Celtics’ win on the faces of people who doubted their chances throughout the 2023-24 campaign, Pierce has also been vigilant in bringing up the disrespect that Jayson Tatum has had to face over the years. In fact, the 2008 NBA Champion didn’t even leave his fellow Undisputed host Skip Bayless off the hook.
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Bayless has been one of the most vociferous Tatum critics over the years. Even when his team was up 3-0 in the 2024 Finals, the veteran analyst focused only on JT’s deficiencies in clutch moments.
Therefore, on the recent episode of UNDISPUTED earlier today, Pierce brought out the receipts against Bayless, which date back to the 2017 Draft, when the FS1 analyst opined that #2 pick Lonzo Ball would surpass Tatum as a future superstar. The Celtics legend demanded an apology from his co-host addressed to Jayson Tatum for blasting the latter throughout his NBA career.
The Truth pointed out that the list of things that Bayless has said against Tatum is so long that a single episode of UNDISPUTED wouldn’t be enough to cover all of them. Clad in Celtics gear, Pierce demanded,
“First of all Skip I need an apology to Jayson Tatum. You ripped him, you said he couldn’t be the guy, he didn’t have the ‘It’ factor, Lonzo will be better than him eventually. Hold on, we need to get some apologies out the way…”
“Jayson Tatum needs an apology! He’s an NBA Champion!”
— @PaulPierce34 pic.twitter.com/F7p11Zf9D4
— UNDISPUTED (@undisputed) June 18, 2024
“The list is long but it will take up the whole show for me to go over all these things you said about ‘im…We just need a short apology, saw it off, he is a Champion now,” he added.
In response, a stubborn Skip Bayless argued that since Jaylen Brown won the Finals MVP award over Jayson Tatum, he doesn’t have to go out of his way and apologize to him. While it is true that Tatum had consistent shooting troubles in the Finals, his overall impact made the Celtics’ two-way efforts more effective.
Jayson Tatum led the Celtics in major categories
It wasn’t like JT had mediocre stats throughout the 2024 playoffs. In 19 games, he racked up 25 points, 10.1 rebounds, 6.3 assists, and 1.1 steals per game and shot 42.7% from the floor. In fact, in terms of average, Tatum led his squad in points, rebounds, and assists throughout the playoffs.
He did suffer a shooting slump during the Finals, nabbing 22.2 points per game on 38.8% shooting from the floor. At the same time, he contributed an impressive 7.8 rebounds and 7.2 assists per game. The assists numbers indicate that JT isn’t a one-dimensional isolation scorer and is always on the hunt for open teammates.
His rebounding numbers also indicate his willingness to hustle hard on the floor and his defensive contributions can’t be emphasized enough. Thus, despite not winning the 2024 Finals MVP award, Tatum has proved that the Celtics wouldn’t have been able to bag a title without his contributions.
