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Jayson Tatum on when he and Jaylen Brown realized they needed each other to win it all

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If there is a partnership in today’s NBA that is more scrutinized than that of star Boston Celtics forwards Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, we can’t think of it. Whether they get along, and if they truly like each other have become the new “split them up, they can’t win together” discourse fans of the team had to endure before the Jays finally won Banner 18 this past June.

And Tatum opened up a bit about that dynamic, sharing the first thing he said to Brown after they won the title on a recent episode of the Wave Sports and Entertainment Original “7 PM in Brooklyn with Carmelo Anthony and The Kid Mero” podcast. “The crazy thing is, I couldn’t even get to (Jaylen Brown) until we got to the podium,” he explained.

Relating the “pandemonium” surrounding him as various members of his family rushed the court, Tatum said. “It was crazy. I’m doing an interview (next), so I didn’t even get to JB until, honestly, he got the finals MVP trophy. He was like, ‘Yo, I couldn’t have done this without JT,’ and that’s when we shook hands, and I was like, ‘I love you bro’.”

“That was the first time I really got to talk to him after the buzzer,” said the Duke alum. “That was 10-15 minutes later because there was so much going on. I’m happy that we did it. We look at it as, we get to the Conference Finals five out of seven years, that’s sustained success.”

“A lot of people saying we don’t have enough, but we knew our time was coming and that any day, or any year, that it was going to fall into place,” offered Tatum. “But it was tough.”

‘Over time we had to learn how to coexist with each other, but that’s with anybody,” he said. “We had to learn that we needed each other, and we got to a perfect point in my career where he had gotten his money, I had got mine.”

“We had All-Star and All NBA selections. Like we weren’t tripping off that and just the only thing we hadn’t done was win a championship.”

Listen to the “Celtics Lab” podcast on:

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3zBKQY6

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3GfUPFi

YouTube: https://bit.ly/3F9DvjQ