On Wednesday night, after the Celtics ousted the Heat in Game 5, Tatum pondered the concept of ‘toughness’ at the podium.
“What’s the definition of tough?” Tatum asked. “Having the louder guys on your team? Like, that shit don’t make you tough. Everybody has their own definition of what toughness is. Playing the right way, showing up every day to do your job without complaining. I think that’s being tough.”
Tatum’s comments came after years of discourse regarding whether the Celtics can be – and have been – out-toughed. Media personalities have routinely questioned Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown’s toughness over the years, with that notion intensifying when the Celtics fell behind 3-0 to the Heat in last year’s Eastern Conference Finals.
At practice, Joe Mazzulla echoed Tatum’s sentiment that toughness is often equated with loudness — and should instead be defined in a myriad of ways.
Jayson Tatum with some illuminating words on the concept of 'toughness':
"It's easy to say teams can out-tough us. I never understood what's the definition of tough? Having louder guys on your team? That shit don't make you tough. Everybody has their own definition." pic.twitter.com/PTIXTABIdI
— Noa Dalzell 🏀 (@NoaDalzellNBA) May 2, 2024
“I think he was dead-on,” Mazzulla said. “It can be defined in a bunch of different ways. And I think sometimes the simplicity, the discipline, to just do the right thing over and over again gets overlooked because you don’t always see it.”
Mazzulla named rebounding, screening, and a discipline to the details all as things that help define toughness for him.
“At the end of day, the toughest team’s going to win,” he said. “And like I said, it could be physically tough, mentally tough, emotionally tough. The toughest team is going to win — who can outwill the other team, who can make the right plays, who can execute at the highest level, who can execute game plan, who can rebound. It’s a little bit of everything.”
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