Celtics’ Jayson Tatum wants changes in All-NBA voting system
Easily one of the best players in the NBA this season, Boston’s star doubled down a view he’s expressed in the past.
Even though he was selected to this year’s All-NBA team, the Celtics star made it clear that he’s still not happy with the way voting works.
Celctics Jayson Tatum wants voting changes for All-NBA teams
During the last year Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum has stated on numerous occasions that he felt he had been disrespected when he was omitted from the list of players selected for last year’s All-NBA teams. It was ultimately a decision that cost Tatum millions of dollars where his present contract is concerned. With that we fast forward to this past Tuesday, when after being selected to the All-NBA first team just prior to his team’s fifth game against the Miami Heat, Tatum made it clear that he felt there should be some form of criteria for voters to adhere to when selecting players.
“What’s the saying, a day late and a dollar short?” Tatum asked rhetorically with a smile after Boston’s shoot-around at FTX Arena. “Obviously, I’m thankful. First-team All-NBA, that’s a big deal. So I’m grateful for that recognition. It wasn’t really incentivized for me [to make it last year] with the money and all of that. It was more just I felt kind of disrespected, and I talked about this quite a bit, just on the criteria and how it’s voted is just so wide open...there’s not really set rules on who should qualify. I think that was the frustrating part. But it happened. Did I think I was one of the best 15 players last year? One thousand percent. But that’s behind me now, and I made it this year and now we’re trying to win a championship.”
What exactly happened with Jayson Tatum’s contract?
As a result of his omission last season, Tatum was subject to a provision included in his contract that states that should he be selected All-NBA, he would see his salary increase to the next level of a max contract - 30% of the salary cap - as opposed to the 25% that traditionally applies to extension of rookies which in turn is governed by a rule in the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement known as the “Rose Rule” which got its name from Derrick Rose. Given that he was not selected, Tatum obviously didn’t get that bump up.
How does this work? Consider that Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young qualified this year for that kind of increase as a result of being selected to the All-NBA third team, while Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker and Minnesota Timberwolves center Karl-Anthony Towns are now in line to put pen to paper on lucrative four-year supermax contract extensions this summer because they made it. Though Tatum admitted that he was not entirely clear on what the criteria should be for voters, he did indicate that he felt rather than be based on positions on the court, it should simply be ‘positionless.’ The Celtics guard went on to underline his point by critiquing the idea that 76ers star Joel Embiid - a center - who finished second to Nikola Jokic - also a center - was on the All-NBA second team.
Does Jayson Tatum have a point?
The first thing to consider here is that there is actually a degree of irony in what Tatum is saying. How so? Realistically speaking if the league implemented a ‘positionless’ structure for voting, it stands to reason that Tatum would have been selected to the second team while the aforementioned Embiid would have been placed on the first. The Celtics star was at the least able to admit he’s not sure of the best way to make the changes he’d like to see. “There just should be some rules in place,” Tatum said. “I don’t know exactly, but maybe you should have to play a certain amount of games, or maybe you’re a playoff team or not. I think it should just be like the 15 best players. Obviously, with some guys in a contract year, supermax deals involved, that’s tough. I’m sure that’s tough on the voters as well. So I think there’s a lot that could be changed in that area, in that regard.”
Interestingly, Tatum also addressed his own inclusion this year having narrowly missed out on voting last season. The Celtics main man said he believed his inclusion this year was primarily down to two things: better overall play by the team as a whole and his own individual improvement in the play-making department. “We won more games than last year,” he said. “But I think play-making, just being able to read the game a lot better slowed it down for me in a lot of ways. And I think that has shown just with my play-making ability and running the offense at times.”