It’s June 17th, 2022. The day after the Boston Celtics lost the NBA Finals to the Golden State Warriors in 6 games. While the sting of defeat, the sadness, and accompanying depression are high, there’s so much more to this than basketball.
I’m nearly 43 years old. I moved to the U.S. from Australia in 2005–long before the days of household internet, live streaming, or Google, The NBA, while popular, wasn’t overly accessible in the early ’90s. I had to rely on the delayed NBA Game of the Week, collecting basketball cards, and a weekly basketball newspaper to get the bulk of my NBA information.
I became a fan the year Shaquille O’Neal, Alonzo Mourning, and Christian Laettner were drafted 1, 2, and 3, respectively, and the year the original Dream Team competed in the Olympic Games. We’d get The Finals, but they were on in the overnight hours or early, early morning if you could even access a channel that aired them.
I latched on to the Boston Celtics as my favorite team because of Dee Brown, THAT dunk, and my affection for that team only grew. In 1998, Paul Pierce became my favorite player and remained just that.
Flash forward to 2022….
This year–throughout the playoffs and Finals–I noticed a kid (I’ll bet you did, too) running around the court before games and locker room like he owned the place. That kid is Jayson Christopher Tatum Jr., or ‘Deuce,” and he’s four years old. His dad, only 24, was on his way to his first NBA Finals, and Duece had a front-row seat for the entire ride.
Now, I’m a good dad, perhaps a great dad, and even a fantastic dad. I’ve always said that if there’s one thing I’m to be remembered for, it’s that I was a super dad. With that, one of the things I love to see is other great dads. And while all this basketball business was going on in Boston and around the country, another great dad was in the public eye under a microscope.
Jayson Tatum had an amazing playoff run on a team that hit the season halfway point with a losing record. How remarkable was that turnaround? The Celtics finished the season with the best record in NBA history for a team with a losing record at the midway point.
But even by his own account, Tatum’s NBA Finals performance wasn’t what he had hoped. A lot of players on the Celtics struggled at times throughout the series. A combined 0 total games played in previous Finals was tough to overcome.
Deuce Tatum, however, didn’t see any of that. Didn’t know. Didn’t care. He saw his dad and his father living his dream that now will become a lifetime of memories.
Deuce Tatum will remember mimicking his dad’s stretches on the court before games, high-fiving the other players in the locker room, watching games courtside, and holding on to his dad’s leg during the national anthem. He’ll be struck that all those moments were televised live to millions of people worldwide.
He doesn’t care now that his dad’s team didn’t win, and he won’t care when he’s my age. I’ll bet he woke up this morning ready to be the most important thing in his dad’s world, and rightly so.
Some things are just bigger than basketball, you know. His idol, his role model, is invincible in his eyes. And in a world full of negatives, this is something that truly matters.
Jayson Tatum, you are one hell of a basketball player, an Olympic gold medalist, and an NBA Finalist. You are also a World Champion Dad. And, now, you are my new favorite player.
