How Boston Got Jayson Tatum And A Couple Of Throwback Pictures

As you probably know, former Duke star Jayson Tatum has had a tremendous rookie season for the Boston Celtics and will begin play against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers (also featuring former Blue Devil Rodney Hood) Sunday in the Eastern Conference Finals.

The groundwork for this came in 2013 and unfortunately at the expense of another former Blue Devil, Billy King, who was the GM of the Brooklyn Nets. Brooklyn traded for aging Boston stars Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce and the Celtics parlayed that into four first round draft picks and used two of them to pick up Tatum and Jaylen Brown.

In 2014, a year after the infamous trade, Tatum and current Celtics teammate Terry Rozier posed for pictures with James at his LeBron James Skills Academy.

Now, just four years later, the pair, along with Brown and the rest of the Celtics, sans Gordon Hayward (out for the year with an ankle injury), former Duke Blue Devil Kyrie Irving (out after knee surgery) and Shane Larkin (out for the playoffs) will try to capture the Eastern Conference title from James, whose Cleveland and Miami teams have won it for the last eight years.

The photos are a bit odd if you look closely. James’s expression is exactly identical in both shots. He is shaking Tatum’s hand in that photo and the background shows he’s moved slightly. Other than that though the same face and upper body could have been photoshopped. He must have done a lot of photos that day.