Celtics forward Jayson Tatum has taken steps toward superstardom during his three years in Boston, enjoying a breakout season and becoming an All-NBA candidate in 2019-20. However, appearing on "All the Smoke" with former NBAers Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson (video link), Tatum admitted that in the days leading up to the 2017 draft, he was hoping he’d end up with the Suns rather than the Celtics.
As Tatum explains, with Markelle Fultz and Lonzo Ball widely expected to go first and second overall, he thought there was a chance he’d go to Philadelphia at No. 3 or Phoenix at No. 4. Just five days before the draft, he visited Phoenix and became smitten with the Suns, who were talking about the idea of pairing him with Devin Booker.
“I called my mom like, ‘I think I want to go to Phoenix,'” Tatum told Barnes and Jackson.
However, the landscape at the top of the draft shifted when the Celtics and Sixers reached an agreement on a trade that sent the No. 1 pick to Philadelphia and the No. 3 pick to Boston. According to Tatum, he got word of that deal shortly after his meeting with the Suns, when he was still in Phoenix.
“My agent calls me, he’s like, ‘Danny Ainge called and said they’re going to trade their pick. They’re going to go to No. 3 and they want you to come to Boston the next day to work out,'” Tatum said. “I’m like, ‘No, I don’t want to go to Boston. I like it out here in Phoenix. It’s cool. The weather’s nice, I’ll get a big house, I’ll get a pool. My mom’s going to be out here.'”
According to Tatum, his agent talked up Boston head coach Brad Stevens and the Celtics’ storied history on that phone call and asked him to think about it visiting the team. However, by the end of their conversation, Tatum still wasn’t convinced.
“We hang up and I’m like, ‘I’m not going to this workout. I’m cool,'” Tatum said.
As Tatum tells it, it took a call from Mike Krzyzewski, his former head coach at Duke, to convince him to work out for the Celtics. Coach K told the young forward that he could learn a lot from Stevens and that he could succeed in Boston, prompting Tatum to visit the C’s just three days before the draft.
While the former Blue Devil still was unconvinced at the time that Phoenix wasn’t a better fit for him, he admits that everything ultimately worked out for the best.
“There was a part of me that didn’t really want to go to Boston because they just were the No. 1 team in the East,” Tatum told Barnes and Jackson. “They had Isaiah Thomas, Al Horford, (Marcus) Smart, JB (Jaylen Brown), Jae Crowder. I was like, ‘Man, I’m not going to play.’ … But everything worked out. It was the best decision.”
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