Last season was a year to forget for Jayson Tatum and the Celtics.
Tatum missed a majority of the season while recovering from an achilles injury, and the Celtics were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, despite Tatum playing in most of the series.
That’s in the past, though, and with Tatum holding the keys to an underrated Celtics roster this season, he could be in for a huge year.
What Jayson Tatum Needs to Do to Win MVP This Season
Tatum has made numerous All-NBA teams in his career, including four All-NBA first-team selections.
That suggests that he’s been around a top-five player in the NBA those seasons. He was a part of some special Celtics rosters those years, but never finished higher than fourth in MVP voting at the end of the season.
Winning MVP is hard to do, and great seasons don’t always get proper recognition, but it’s a nice honor for an individual to get, and it plays a large role in how a player’s resume is viewed.
Tatum, entering the prime of his career, has a chance to finally get an MVP award after the departure of Jaylen Brown.
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Of course, Brown wasn’t holding Tatum back from winning MVP when he was in Boston, but the award is heavily based on statistics, and having more time with the ball in the coming seasons will be a benefit for Tatum in this aspect.
Since 2015-16, the MVP winners have averaged over 27 PPG in 9 of the last 11 years.
That seems like the minimum PPG he’ll need to meet, but there’s more to winning MVP than just PPG.
Being a part of a winning team plays a large role as well. In the last 11 seasons, the MVP has been a part of a team that finished first in their conference 6 times. The other 5 winners consisted of 1 second-place finish, 2 third-place finishes and 2 sixth-place finishes.
The sixth-place finishes were when Nikola Jokic and Russell Westbrook had seasons so historic it was hard not to give them the award, but the general recent pattern is that an MVP is typically on a top-3 team in their conference.
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Tatum would really need to have an all-time performance this season to be a legit threat to win the award if the Celtics don’t finish near the top-3 in the East.
Of course, there are a lot of advanced stats that have become prominent recently, including win shares and OFF/DEF rating, which show how impactful a player is when they play vs. when they don’t.
With the competition being so high in the MVP race recently, Tatum will likely need something along the lines of 29 PPG, 10 RPG and 6 APG in addition to a top-3 finish in the East to be considered for the award.
A lot of people are counting out the Celtics after the moves made this offseason, so that narrative could be in Tatum’s favor if he and the Celtics are able to exceed expectations this year.
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