Jayson Tatum’s jump shot has become a major talking point among not only Celtics fans, but throughout the entire NBA community. Can Jayson Tatum shoot? Did his time in the weight room break his jump shot? Does it even matter if Tatum can shoot?
For a player that’s had as much success as Tatum, it’s a little bizarre how hyper fixated people (myself included) are on his jumper. The reality is that when it comes to shooting an orange ball into a basket 24 feet away, there is an element of luck and variance. This is true for all basketball players. Not just Jayson Tatum.
For example, Luka Doncic missed 21 straight three pointers in the NBA Finals. It is hard to accept as basketball fans that sometimes shooting, especially in the playoffs, comes down to luck. Fans don’t care about large sample sizes and statistical terms like “variance” when we’re on our knees begging for a Tatum three pointer to go in. Players can have entire seasons where they shoot well above their career averages while on the other hand, players can have season-long shooting slumps.
Can Jayson Tatum shoot at all? The answer is unequivocally yes. Across a seven-year career (regular season and playoffs combined), Tatum has made 1,559 out of 4,215 three pointers or 36.98%, which is above the league average ~36%. More recently, Tatum just enjoyed his best regular season shooting the ball since the 2020-2021 season – turning in a three-point percentage of 37.5%. That’s an elite number when you factor in Tatum’s high volume and high difficulty three point shot diet.
Over the past season, there were 55 total players that took at least six three pointers per game. Tatum ranked 27th in three point percentage amongst them. Notable players that had a worse three point percentage than Tatum last season were Donovan Mitchell, Damian Lillard, Devin Booker, Anthony Edwards, Trae Young, Tyrese Maxey, Darius Garland, Tyrese Haliburton, and Mikal Bridges. Of the 26 players ahead of Tatum, I classified 14 of them as catch and shoot specialists – Luke Kennard, Malik Beasley, Donte DiVincenzo, Michael Porter Jr, etc. The point is, Tatum had a really impressive regular season shooting the ball when you look at his three-point shot profile.
However, that percentage cratered in the playoffs to 28.3%. In the Finals, he made just 10-of-38. The Olympics weren’t any better. He missed all four for Team USA. So, the question remains: can Tatum still shoot?
The Muscle Theory
Some have hypothesized that Tatum has gotten too jacked, that the increased size of his *glorious* deltoids and biceps have impacted his shooting form and shooting ability. This is nonsense. As I just laid out, Tatum shot 37.5% from three-point range this past regular season, his highest mark since the 2020-2021 season. Did the muscles only impact Tatum’s shooting in the playoffs? If anything, players tend to lose a small amount of muscle through the regular season and postseason as there isn’t enough time in their schedule to lift as often as during the offseason. Not to mention, there are countless examples of players getting significantly bigger and stronger throughout their career while not losing their shooting ability with Steph Curry being the most obvious example here.
I’m not going to pretend to be a professional shot doctor. I just got back from the park where I shot 39% (being generous) on solo jumpers. But I have pulled together several three pointers from each of Tatum’s 2020, 2022 and 2024 playoff runs to compare his shot form.
I must emphasize how much I am not a shooting expert. If the name of the celebrity shooting coach that fixed Grant Williams’ jump shot is Lethal Shooter, my celebrity influencer shooting name would be Harmless Shooter. That being said, I can’t make out any noticeable differences in Tatum’s shooting form. The main takeaway from that video is how many giant shots Tatum has hit in his young career.
Is the bad shooting a playoff-specific problem? Tatum has shot a combined 30.4% from three over his last two playoff runs. These samples are just too small to make sweeping declarations about a player’s shooting ability. Across the last two playoffs combined, Tatum shot 304 total three pointers, which would make up only half of Tatum’s 2024 regular season three-point attempts. We are only two playoffs removed from the 2022 Finals run where Tatum shot 39.3% from three which was likely a bit of an outlier in the other direction. It would be great if we could just get Tatum’s career three-point average every night. Sadly, the variance gods don’t operate that way.
Shot selection
Tatum takes tough shots. A lot of them he has to take, but some of them he probably doesn’t have to take. The reality is, superstars have to take tough shots. When you break down which shots Tatum made versus which shots he missed in the 2024 Playoffs, it’s very clear that the shots that didn’t fall were the tightly contested ones.
Tatum simply shot better on tightly contested three-point attempts in the previous two playoff runs, 27.9% in 2023 and 29.2% in 2022 compared to 10.4% in the 2024 Playoffs per Synergy tracking.
Do you want to make the case that Tatum should just take less tough shots and drive to the rim more? Sure, but the thing is, the numbers would indicate that Tatum agrees with you. Tatum took less tightly contested threes per game in the 2024 Playoffs than in both the 2023 and 2024 Playoffs.
Also, just looking at total three-point volume. This past playoffs was Tatum’s lowest mark since he became The Guy in the 2019-20 season. Tatum took less threes per 36 minutes in the 2024 Playoffs than every playoff run going all the way back to the 2018-19 season.
Did Tatum feel that the three ball wasn’t there so he didn’t force it? Did it become obvious that the correct approach was getting downhill and collapsing the defense over and over again so he could spray passes out to elite shooters all over the court? Probably a little bit of column A and a little bit from column B. The fact that Tatum slightly altered his approach to better impact the team in a way that I didn’t previously notice until diving into this is such a quintessential Jayson Tatum trait. He’s been miscast as a Kobe disciple when he’s really a wing version of Tim Duncan.
Does Tatum’s shooting really matter?
You should now believe deep in your heart that Tatum actually is a good shooter. We can now move on to the more interesting question of whether it actually matters if Jayson Tatum is a good shooter. The answer is no, it doesn’t matter.
To put it simply – if Jayson Tatum had hit one more three pointer per game in the playoffs, he would have shot 42% from three and the Celtics would have gone 16-3 on the way to the title. This is what makes Jayson Tatum special and unique as a player. His impact is not defined by his three-point shot going in.
As long as teams continue to guard Tatum as if he can shoot, that’s all that really matters. Just the threat of Tatum’s pull-up three opens up all the driving lanes we saw in the Finals. He has to keep taking them. And more importantly, it doesn’t matter if Tatum isn’t a great shooter because he is excellent at every other facet of the game of basketball which is why Tatum’s impact on winning is not at the mercy of the shooting variance gods.
This is just absurd versatility and impact. Firstly, Tatum is guarding the opposing center Evan Mobley, which is not something you can ask many wings in the NBA to do. Max Strus finds Isaac Okoro on a slip to the rim. Tatum helps off Mobley to protect the rim and forces the miss. This leads to a wide-open Al Hoford three in transition, which he misses, but that’s ok because Tatum gets the offensive rebound with a controlled tip back to Horford. Al then finds Tatum in the post. Tatum skips a pass to Jrue Holiday in the corner for a wide open three. That’s a five-point swing in a 1-1 playoff series on the road. I’d love to spend more time talking about all the different ways Jayson Tatum impacts a basketball game, but we’ll have to save that for another day.
It wasn’t an accident that Jayson Tatum led the Celtics in playoff points, rebounds and assists; whether or not Tatum’s three-point shot falling or not was largely irrelevant. Obviously, the orange ball going in the basket more often would be better for both Tatum and the Celtics. But when you’re the engine of one of the best offenses and defenses in the NBA, one extra three-point basket per game is not meaningfully changing the fortunes of the Boston Celtics.
