A curious thing is happening in the start to Jayson Tatum’s 2020-21 season — or more accurately, something is NOT happening that is highly unusual.
That thing would be free throws for the Duke product, or the complete and total absence of them despite scoring 50 points across as many shot attempts. If that sounds weird, it’s because it is — in fact it is such an unusual situation as to never have occurred in the entire seven-decade history of the league. Basketball Reference’s Justin Kubatko recently related that no player scoring 20 field goal attempts or more has gone without a free throw since the NBA was founded.
Jayson Tatum is the first player in NBA history to open a season with consecutive games of 20 or more FGA and zero FTA.
Coming into this season, Tatum only had three such game in his entire career. pic.twitter.com/RcLUF7tTNo
— Justin Kubatko (@jkubatko) December 26, 2020
And it isn’t as if the All-NBA wing isn’t getting to the cup — he has taken 31 shots inside the 3-point line this season to date, and attempted nine shots in or very near to the restricted zone in the Celtics’ Christmas Day loss to the Brooklyn Nets alone.
What gives?
This is Tatum's shot chart. It's a bit unusual for a guy to get 8 shots in the restricted area and no free throws pic.twitter.com/Lax2pQ8i1z
— John Karalis 🇬🇷 (@RedsArmy_John) December 26, 2020
A lack of respect from the zebras? An overly calm demeanor? Perhaps a dash of both, but it isn’t as if one can crawl inside the minds of the officiating crews to find the determining factor.
For now at least, we’ll chalk it up to a highly unusual series of events — or perhaps the refs used all of their allowed calls on Daniel Theis already.
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