Amile Jefferson On Jayson Tatum

As most of you know, former Duke star, captain and assistant coach Amile Jefferson left Jon Scheyer’s Duke staff recently to join the Boston Celtics, where he reunited with former Duke teammate Jayson Tatum.

Tatum of course has become an NBA superstar since leaving Duke and recently signed a massive five-year, $163,000,300 contract that will help keep him as a focal point of the Celtics for the foreseeable future (apparently teammate Jaylen Brown is negotiating a deal that is nearly twice as big as Tatum’s, which could make things interesting).

He talks here a bit about Tatum at Duke and what made him different:

“He was super physical, and you don’t really find freshmen that seek out the contact. Like, he would go into people’s bodies. He’d pull you in, he wanted to get hit, and he knew how to do all those things. He was advanced...He was ultra-competitive and wanted to win anything. I think that’s an early sign, but a really good sign of a player who you know is going to bring it every day.”

“I always admire guys who hate losing more than they love winning.”

Spoken like a guy who was coached by Mike Krzyzewski.