Jayson Tatum is considered by much as the best prospect from the 2017 Draft class and honestly, he’s earned that right. Ever since he made it to the league as the 2nd overall pick, he’s done nothing but improving his craft and proving that he can be the face of a franchise like the Boston Celtics.
However, like most things in sports, it could’ve gone a completely different way for the Duke product, as he recently admitted in ‘All The Smoke’ that he wanted to be drafted by the Phoenix Suns instead. He even claimed that he wasn’t interested in even working out for the Celtics and his agent had to sell him into it:
“I’m like, ‘I’m not trying to hear that. I want to go to Phoenix. My agent was like, ‘Just think about it.’ And then, we hang up. I’m like, ‘I’m not going to this workout. Like, I’m cool,” Tatum claimed.
Jayson Tatum, on the All The Smoke podcast, said he didn't initially want the Cs to draft him. They had just been the No. 1 team in the East. He didn't know whether he'd play a lot or have a chance to get buckets. He wanted to play in Phoenix instead.
Tatum: "It worked out."
— Jay King (@ByJayKing) May 11, 2020
And as a matter of fact, former Suns coach Earl Watson admitted that he was pushing the front office to trade up and go get Tatum, but the team’s executive didn’t feel like they needed another scorer next to Devin Booker and decided to go with Josh Jackson instead:
“I was pushing Tatum. Like, we had to move up for Tatum, we had to get Tatum. And ownership chose Josh Jackson. I knew the two players were dynamically different, but my vision was what’s the best fit for Devin Booker. Booker and Tatum, I think a combination like that right now would have been completely different than anything in the NBA at that age,” Watson told Jay King of The Athletic.
Apparently, Tatum didn’t want to hurt his chances by joining a team that was coming off being the 1st seed in the Eastern Conference and already had plenty of mouths to feed, but luckily for him, it worked out perfectly.
This season Tatum’s averaging 23.6 points, 7.1 rebounds, 2.9 assists, 1.4 steals, and 2.8 three-pointers on 44/39/80 shooting and earned the first All-Star nod of his career, so thank God it all happened the way it was intended to.
