Jayson Tatum’s Step-back Three is One of the NBA’s Most Dangerous Weapons
At the end of regulation in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals, with the score tied and five seconds left, Jayson Tatum held the ball on the left wing, almost at midcourt. He calmly sized up Derrick Jones Jr., dribbled twice between his legs, feinted as if he was going to drive right and then, at the last second, snatched the ball back to set up what’s quickly becoming his trademark move: the step-back three. It missed.
The Miami Heat went on to win in overtime after Bam Adebayo denied Tatum’s dunk attempt at the buzzer. Afterwards, Tatum’s shot was criticized for its supposed excessiveness in a tie game. All Boston needed was a single point, and to launch such a deep, difficult shot as time expired seemed sub-optimal.
In reality, given the constraints of the moment—Boston can’t afford to leave any time on the clock, doesn’t want to commit a turnover, and would ideally like it's best shooter to take the final shot—very few alternatives are superior.
The point of the step-back is to generate one of the game’s most efficient shots against a defender who knows you want to take it. If you can make it with decent enough accuracy at a high volume, in today’s NBA, you’re essentially a star—think James Harden, Damian Lillard, or Luka Doncic. Few shots are more valuable. And few players are more comfortable taking step-back threes than Tatum.
During the regular season, approximately 20 percent of Tatum’s threes came after a step-back; he drilled 42.7 percent. The season prior, step-backs helped create about 11 percent of Tatum’s threes, and only 27 percent went in. This data includes multiple variations of the step-back, and Tatum, who is 22 and was recently named to his first All-NBA team, owns a technical command over pretty much all of them, be it escape-dribbling from a hard closeout or creating space with his handle against defenders who have to respect the drive.
On broader pull-up threes, Tatum’s volume and accuracy in these playoffs is matched by only a handful of players. In Round 2 against the Toronto Raptors, Fred VanVleet and Kyle Lowry were tasked with defanging Tatum’s live dribble in iso situations. For the most part, it worked: Tatum was hesitant throughout that series to break out his bread-and-butter. But there were a few spot-up situations where he leveraged his dangerous spot-up accuracy to draw a hard closeout, then sidestep his way into an oasis:
Shots like that were few and far between. But against Miami, Tatum can breathe. We saw it in the first quarter of Game 1, when Jae Crowder and Kendrick Nunn let Tatum dribble into pull-up threes he can knock down in his sleep. Not only is the shot nearly unguardable—and forces coverage that’s tight enough to leave whoever’s guarding him susceptible to a blow by—but when a defender lets Tatum get into it at a leisurely pace, well, that defender probably can’t be on the floor when he is.
Heat forward Kelly Olynyk only played 10 minutes in Game 1, but the shot below will be in the back of Heat coach Erik Spoesltra’s mind whenever he thinks about subbing his backup big into this series. Offensive strategy in playoffs can sometimes boil down to hunting a weak link; so long as Tatum can get a three off whenever he wants against Olynyk—or Tyler Herro and Goran Dragic—best believe the Celtics will go to it until Miami is forced to adjust.
Too much of anything is a bad thing, and it’d be a detriment to Boston’s overall offense for Tatum to repeatedly isolate behind the three-point line while his teammates stand and watch (aka become Harden). He also still has a penchant for difficult mid-range looks that would be better served a few feet further from or closer to the basket. But few individual weapons in the entire NBA are more dynamic, intoxicating, and potent than Tatum’s stepback—Miami should worry about it, even if they didn’t on Tuesday night.
Originally Appeared on GQ
