Kemba hurt his knee that January and was never the same again. By the time the playoffs came around he was a liability in a way that nobody in the Thunder rotation was. A 21-year-old Tatum nearly led that team to the East finals anyway (and unlike 26–year-old SGA, he didn’t commit a series-losing boneheaded foul).
As for him regressing:
He’s a power forward who’s in the top 6 in the league in points per possession running the pick & roll.
That’s not regression. He gave up boxscore stats to becomes a better, more effective overall player. And the Celtics won a title because of it — even when his jumper broke.
You can pull any advanced stat you want to say he didn’t regress but I think the minutes he got during the Olympics and the fact he didn’t win any postseason awards as the best player say otherwise man.
I don’t really care about a pick and roll stat where’s he’s passing it to a Porzingis, White, Holiday and Brown have to say. He’s good at the stat because he’s playing with good players. Not because he’s doing something remarkable.
Kemba literally averaged 24 a game on 50% shooting in the first round series of that bubble playoffs. I’m not sure where the he was a liability thing coming from.
Checking out these highlights, he even closed out some of the playoff games in the bubble:
It’s okay man Tatum has been playing poorly even with Boston still being good enough to win the championship in spite of it lol.
