Jayson Tatum and the team game

“From 1 to 15, somebody’s sacrificed something.”

Those were Jrue Holiday’s words on Sunday night, after the Celtics took an imposing 2-0 lead on the Dallas Mavericks in a closely fought contest that they won 105-98.

There are some great teams that are great because of one transcendent player. When you look back at NBA history, you find players like Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan and LeBron James standing so far above their teammates in what they do on the court that there is no question regarding their greatness. It’s as obvious as putting a 100-watt light bulb into chandelier full of 40-watt bulbs and asking people to point out the brightest light.

Then there are teams where the best player’s greatness is inextricable from the team’s successes. On the 1960s Celtics teams, the unquestioned leader was Bill Russell, yet he retired with 14,522 career points, for a paltry average of just 15.1 points per game in a league where scoring came from the paint to a far greater extent than it does today. In the years since, those numbers have been used to downplay his greatness, as though his own contributions to the game had little to do with the fact that he retired with more rings than fingers.

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The players on those teams all made sacrifices to their games, not just Russell. Sometimes the sacrifices were obvious, sometimes they weren’t. Bill Sharman was a gifted scorer and one of the league’s first prolific jump shooters. Because of this, Sharman was taken to task for being a ‘gunner,’ and accused of being selfish. His response is telling. “I’m a shooter. A shooter is paid to shoot. He helps the team by shooting.” Comparing his role to Russell’s, Sharman asked, “does he say to one of us, ‘I’ll take this rebound, and you take the next?’ Certainly not. He gets all the rebounds he can. That’s his job, and he’s helping the team.”

In 1960, Red Auerbach drafted the star of the New York University Violets (yes, “Violets”), a guy who had led the team in scoring, and had led them to the Final Four. He’d come up in the Harlem basketball scene, and had passed the scrutiny of the old hands there. He was a fantastic all-around player, and his name was Tom Sanders — although everyone called him Satch.

He played 13 seasons for the Celtics and his highest season average was 12.6 points per game. His career average isn’t even double digits. Was this because he couldn’t shoot? Nah. He was a career 43% shooter, which was not bad for a back court player in those days.

Sanders had long arms and he was tough, and Auerbach didn’t want him to score. So, for thirteen years he didn’t. He left the back court scoring up to John Havlicek and Sam Jones, and he made a living making people miserable.

When the Celtics played the Lakers, Satch’s primary assignment was Elgin Baylor.

In the 1969 NBA Finals, probably the greatest sustained display of willpower by one team over another in NBA history, Satch snuffed out Baylor. He held Baylor’s scoring average to 18 points per game, nearly 7 points below his regular season average of 24.8. Satch also knocked his FG% down from a regular season 44.6% to 39.7%.

In a series where Boston’s average margin of victory was just 4.5 points, Sanders’ defense on Baylor was instrumental. In games Boston won, Sanders held Baylor to just 15.5 points on 31.9% shooting.

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When Sanders joined the team, he recalled years later, Auerbach had a simple message for him, “‘I’m glad you can score for this team. Rebounding and defense is what you’re going to do.’” Sanders assumed that role — and enjoyed it.

Sacrificing individual highlights for team success was a hallmark of the oft-overlooked 70s title teams as well — perhaps even more so than the 60s teams.

With the league adopting more comprehensive statistics in 1974, Value Over Replacement Player stats could be calculated. VORP is, basically, a stat that estimates the value of a given player’s box score contributions to the team over those of a theoretical reserve. There are some external weights inserted to the numbers — rebounds by guards are given more weight than rebounds by front court players, for example — but the method of calculating is consistent over time, so there is some merit in longitudinal analysis of VORP numbers.

These numbers for Boston’s ‘74 and ‘76 title teams are pretty remarkable. For ‘74, the highest VORP on the team belongs to Dave Cowens, at 3.3. The next highest is Hondo at 3.1, and from there on down, there are 5 players with a VORP of at least one. In ‘76, it was Cowens at 4.3 followed by Havlicek at 2.3.

Now absent any context, those numbers may not seem that interesting. But let’s take a look at the VORP stats for the team that won the title in ‘75, the Golden State Warriors, led by Rick Barry. His VORP was 5.7, and the number two player on the Warriors? Butch Beard at 1.8.

The Blazers won the title in ‘77, and not surprisingly, the team VORP leader was Bill Walton at 5.0, and next in line after him was Bob Gross at 2.8.

Even on the Celtics title teams in the 80s, Bird was the overwhelming team leader in VORP. In ‘86, Bird’s VORP was 8.4, and McHale was next in line with 3.9.

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So where do this year’s Celtics sit in VORP?

Tatum has a VORP of 4.7, and the next two players are Derrick White with 3.5 and KP with 3.0.

Compare that with the Dallas Mavericks. There, unsurprisingly, the team leader in VORP is Luka Doncic at 8.0, with Kyrie Irving a distant second at 3.6. No other player has a VORP higher than two.

The Celtics play as a team in a way that is positively old school.

Making use of the NBA’s tracking data, we find that nobody on the Celtics has an average time of possession higher than 4.8 minutes per game. Contrast that with the Mavs, where Luka has the ball in his hands 8.3 minutes per game, almost 30% of the time the Mavs have the ball.

When it comes to drives, the C’s share the wealth as well. Jaylen Brown is, not surprisingly, the team’s leader in drives per game, but he accounts for less than 20% of all the team’s drives. On the Mavs, Doncic, on his own, takes 27% of the team’s drives, and he and Kyrie account for almost 44% of them. As far as catch-and-shoot situations go, the Celtics have six volume shooters that have a better than 60% eFG%; the Mavs have one.

What does this all mean? Any of the C’s 60% eFG catch-and-shoot players could be clamoring for more shot opportunities, and any of the C’s players capable of driving to the hoop on a consistent and successful basis could be trying to increase their share of the team’s drives. These players could check out of the offense when their number’s not being called. They could check out of the game when they’re sitting on the bench.

But that’s not what’s happening here. These guys know that their individual statistics are suffering on a team that has this much talent available, and that’s what Jrue meant when he said that everyone on the team has sacrificed something. The box scores, and even the advanced tracking, only capture a fraction of what these players are capable of doing if they were to put their own stats ahead of the final score.

And that attitude of sacrifice comes from the top down. These guys know how good Tatum is. They know that he’s All-NBA, they know he’s about to get paid big time, and they know that he’s subject to continual discussion these days about whether he’s all that special.

Now what you have to factor into these debates as it impacts players, is everybody else sits on the sidelines and watches greatness. Players have a totally different perspective on it. It’s one thing to watch Luka, it’s another thing to line up opposite him and try to stop him.

These guys, they have a different perspective on greatness than we do, and they know that what Tatum does is based on what the team needs to have done, and not what makes the highlight reels. They know how good Tatum is because they practice with him, they play with him, they work with him, and they know that Tatum is mature enough to chuck his individual numbers in the bin if it means giving the team the best chance to win, and that inspires everyone else on the team to do the same.

Popular consensus seems to have decided the old Wilt vs. Russell debate in favor of Wilt, but Russell’s the one with all the championships. Russ racked up the stat that mattered most to him.

Similarly, there may come a time when people look at Tatum vs. Doncic, or Tatum vs. Jokic, in similarly pat terms, but I’ll make a prediction right here and now. Tatum will, like Russell, be the player with the most success as a teammate.

Not just because he has better teams, but because he makes his teams better.