Despite a rocky start to their time playing together, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum have blossomed into one of the best NBA duos going today.
Both players are incredible two-way stars, who have shown that they can take over a game on any given night. The two even celebrated after reaching the Finals, where Jayson Tatum mocked the rest of the NBA who said they could not play together.
One of these people was Kendrick Perkins, who said that the Celtics should blow the duo up earlier this year. But they proved him and the others wrong by taking the Celtics back to the Finals for the first time since 2010.
And by helping the Celtics reach the NBA Finals, Tatum and Brown made history by joining an elite group of players and franchises from the last 40 years.
The Boston Celtics became only the 4th team in the last 40 years to reach the NBA Finals with their two top scorers, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, being 25 years old or younger.
The last team to do so was Oklahoma City 10 years ago, being led by Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. Orlando Magic did this in 1995 behind Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway, and the Rockets did the same in 1986 while being led by Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson.
The Celtics are just the 4th team in the past 40 seasons to make the NBA Finals with 2 of their leading scorers being aged 25 or younger (Jaylen Brown/Jayson Tatum). They join:
2012 Thunder
(Durant & Westbrook)
1995 Magic
(Shaq & Hardaway)
1986 Rockets
(Olajuwon & Sampson) pic.twitter.com/IXus8AbRiN
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) May 31, 2022
Jayson Tatum has led the Celtics in scoring, averaging 27 points per game during this playoff run. Whereas Jaylen Brown has been averaging 22.9 points per game during this playoff stretch.
But Tatum and Brown will be hoping that joining this elite list is not an indicator of how their season will end. Each of the duos mentioned above lost in the NBA Finals when they led their teams as the youngest top scorers.
For Brown and Tatum, this could be a sign of things to come as they get ready to face the Golden State Warriors, one of the most successful NBA teams in recent memory.
