Celtics’ Jayson Tatum gets real on ‘second chance’ at championship in 2024 NBA Finals

Making the NBA Finals is a great accomplishment for any team, yet Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics aren’t content with just viewing it as an achievement. Rather, they’re looking at it as another opportunity.

In 2022, the Celtics battled their way to the Finals for the first time in over a decade. However, they fell to the Golden State Warriors in six games and had to witness their dynastic opponent celebrate a championship on the TD Garden parquet.

Tatum remembers the sting of that defeat, and he’s aiming to learn from it ahead of his squad’s 2024 Finals matchup against the Dallas Mavericks, per Bobby Krivitsky of SI.com.

“There’s a lot that myself and we can learn from that experience, being in the Finals,” he told the media on Saturday afternoon. “This time is a lot different. Obviously, we’ve been there before, we came up short … You don’t always get a second chance, so really just looking at it as a second chance. Trying to simplify things as much as we can. It’s just another series that we’ve gotta win.”

With the parity of today’s NBA, Tatum’s point about the rarity of second chances rings true. In 2021, the Phoenix Suns made the Finals in the hope of winning their first championship ever. They lost in six games to the Milwaukee Bucks and haven’t made it past the second round since.

Last year, the eighth-seeded Miami Heat shocked the world and beat the Celtics to advance to the 2023 NBA Finals. They were then defeated in five games by the Denver Nuggets and promptly swept in the first round this postseason by the C’s, leaving plenty of questions about the Heat’s future this offseason.

Essentially, there was no guarantee that Tatum and company would return to the championship round after a disappointing finish two seasons ago. But, the Celtics are back with a chance to win their first ring in over 15 years.

The Celtics are not the same team from 2022

While 2022 was an opening for the C’s, they were still relatively inexperienced. They had no rostered players who had won a ring, let alone been in the NBA Finals.

As a result, the Celtics didn’t respond well after going up 2-1 in the series. The Warriors punched back and never looked back, beating the C’s by double digits in Games 4, 5, and 6.

This season, the Celtics have much more experience. Outside of center Kristaps Porzingis, whose status is still uncertain for Game 1 against the Mavs, every Boston starter has been to the Finals at least once. First-year Celtic Jrue Holiday even has championship experience, as he won it all in 2021 with the Bucks.

“We feel like we’re a different team than we were last year and the year before that,” Celtics star Jaylen Brown said after Boston’s series-clinching, Game 4 victory in the Eastern Conference Finals. “I know everybody wants to continue to kind of pigeonhole us to what’s happened in the past, but we’ve had a different team every single year. Different coaches. We’ve had like three coaches in the last five years, and still, people want to just make it seem like it’s the same, it’s the same, it’s the same. Time has gone by, experience has been gained, and I think we are ready to put our best foot forward.”

Tatum wasn’t able to put his best foot forward in the 2022 Finals, averaging 21.5 points per game on 36.7% shooting from the field. He’s eager to make up for that disappointment this time, per Noa Dalzell of CelticsBlog.

“We’re anxious and excited to play,” he said following a Saturday practice. “I wish it did start a little bit earlier so we can get after it.”

If Tatum can limit his turnovers and be the playmaker he’s been in the last three rounds, the C’s will have a real shot at Banner No. 18. He’ll seek redemption starting on Thursday, June 6th, during Game 1 of the Finals in Boston.