Jayson Tatum

Jayson Tatum is a forward for the Boston Celtics, born and raised in St. Louis, where his mother was a student and later a lawyer and his father coached high school basketball. He spent one season at Duke and was drafted third in 2017, reaching the Eastern Conference finals as a rookie.

He is a three-level scorer built around footwork rather than burst, and he has been asked to carry an unusually heavy offensive load since his early twenties. That workload, and the long playoff runs that came with it, defined Boston's decade.

He was the leading man on the team that won the 2024 championship, the franchise's eighteenth, and has won Olympic gold with the United States in both Tokyo and Paris. A ruptured Achilles suffered in the 2025 playoffs cost him most of the following season, and his return is the story around which Boston's roster has been rebuilt.

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