Is Jayson Tatum having best NBA Rookie season in ACC history?

The NBA Rookie of the Year may go to either Philadelphia’s Ben Simmons or Utah’s Donovan Mitchell, the leaders for most of this season. But what Jayson Tatum has done for the injury- riddled Celtics makes him a close third, and he is perhaps having the best rookie season in NBA history of anyone not named “Magic.”

Tatum’s numbers – averaging about 14 points and 5 rebounds – aren’t spectacular, but he has started every game as a 20-year-old. Tatum has giant-stepped up for a team that lost its best two players and is one win away from reaching the NBA Finals. Rookies of the Year Larry Bird; Michael Jordan and Ralph Sampson never did that.

Tatum was a very good player in his one year at Duke, but the 2017 Blue Devils did not get out of the first weekend of the NCAA tournament. The Celtics actually traded away their first pick for the third the NBA draft and plucked underrated Tatum, who is now a budding superstar as a rookie.

By my count, 13 ACC players won NBA Rookie of the Year, from Carolina’s Robert McAdoo in 1973 to Virginia’s Malcolm Brogdon last year. In between have been Walter Davis, Phil Ford, Jordan, Grant Hill, Tim Duncan, Vince Carter, Elton Brand and Kyrie Irving, the former one-and-done Dukie who won an NBA title in Cleveland and then was traded to the Celtics.

Besides Magic Johnson, who won the NBA championship and Rookie of the Year? No other rook has been to the NBA Finals. Tatum is one game away after leading his new team to victory in game five of the Eastern Conference championship, then he can join Johnson in that distinction.

Tatum isn’t the star of the Celtics, just one of several players who have banded together after the loss of Gordon Hayward and Irving to lead them further than anyone ever expected. They can deny LeBron James an eighth straight trip to the NBA Finals by winning either game six or game seven.

That Tatum is only 20, and plays with such poise, is remarkable – and his story is equally so. Raised by a single mom in St. Louis, he got hooked on basketball at a young age after Kobe Bryant became his favorite player. His mother encouraged him to keep playing while she worked and eventually got three college degrees, including law school.

What a story Jayson Tatum is writing.