With All This Talk About All Time Records, Here's A Look At What Celtics Franchise Records Are Currently On The Table

Chris Marion. Getty Images.

Arguably the biggest story in sports right now not named the Super Bowl is obviously LeBron's historic night. When you pull something off that has a strong chance of never happening again, it's a huge deal. That's why there are dozens of blogs about it on this fine website, it's all over Twitter and I'm sure will be all over TV today. As annoying as it might be, just remember the Lakers ultimately lost last night and are still in the Lottery.

With most things in life, after watching LeBron's moment my brain started to do what it does best. Immediately shift gears to the Boston Celtics. If you look around the NBA and some of the other all time records, I feel confident in saying we won't see any others be broken in our lifetimes. Nobody is catching Wilt's 23,924 rebounds, or Stockton's 15,806 assists, or Stockton's 3,265 steals, or Hakeem's 3,830 blocks, or Steph's 3,302 (and counting) 3PM. Think of the type of player it took just to pass the scoring record and that same guy is only 4th in assists. That group of records feels safe.

Knowing that I shifted my focus to Celts' franchise records. I'm lucky enough to have already experienced the joy of watching a player of my generation prove to be one of the best players the Celtics have ever had. When it comes to passing the legends and adding your name to the list, Paul Pierce was the closest I ever got to seeing it. As a quick reminder, Pierce is….

3rd in games played (1,102)

3rd in minutes played (40,360)

3rd in FGM (7,882)

7th in 2pt FGM (6,059)

1st in 3PM (1,823)

1st in FTM (6,434)

7th in rebounds (6,651)

5th in assists (4,305)

1st in steals (1,583)

4th in blocks (668)

2nd in points (24,021)

So when I say shit like Pierce was my generation's Bird, I'm being serious. I know he gets clowned on the internet now in 2023, but Paul Pierce was legitimately one of the greatest Celtics of all time. There's a reason Mike Gorman says he's his favorite Celtic, and last time I checked Mike Gorman has seen some shit.

Fast forward to this era of Celtics basketball. How likely is it that we not only see a similar run like Pierce, but also which all time Celts records are actually on the table? I don't think it's a hot take to suggest that if there's going to be a player from this era that could be this generation's Pierce, that player is Jayson Tatum. Let's have a look at where things currently stand

Of course, this exercise assumes a few things. For starters, Jayson Tatum is going to have to be a Celtic until probably his mid 30s and beyond. We're going to just say that will be the case for the sake of this blog. He also needs to be relatively healthy (which doesn't seem like an issue right now). If both of those things happen, there are a few all time Celts records that I think are "realistic" to one day see Jayson Tatum pass.

The first is obviously 3PM. At the moment, Tatum is only 3 3PM away from becoming the youngest player in NBA history to make 1,000. The same way Pierce's total was somewhat inflated due to era, the same is true for Tatum. Considering he's only 827 away from passing Pierce and Tatum averages around 180+ a year, this will probably happen before he turns 30.

That's one.

Next up are Games Played and Minutes Played. If there's one thing I respect the hell out of with Jayson Tatum, it's that he plays. The idea of load management does not exist for him. While some cry about that, I love it. I enjoy watching Tatum play basketball so the fact that he always plays is something I consider a positive. He's 855 games behind Hondo, which is a lot. Tatum basically will need to average 75 games over the next 11ish years to get to that number. I think he can knock out around 375 off that number before he turns 30. The minutes played might be tough, Hondo averaged 36.6 a night which is 3 more minutes on average than Tatum's 33.9, but Tatum has been around a minimum of 35 minutes for the last few years now. Given his durability and availability, I'm not ruling it out, even if he is over 32,000 minutes behind.

Advertisement

This has the potential of adding two more.

Finally, there's the scoring record. Pierce got close, he's within 2,374 of Hondo and this is another one that really just feels like a matter of time when it comes to Tatum. When you add in the 3PM he's going to finish with, if he's healthy I think I might even call this a lock. At the moment, Tatum is 17,178 points from passing Hondo and if he's able to maintain this level of production for around another 10ish years, that should be enough. Considering we have no idea what Tatum's prime even looks like yet, it could be even sooner. Would it surprise anyone if he had a run of a few 30 point averages as he enters the back half of his 20s? If Tatum actually got a normal superstar whistle I would say Pierce's FTM record is on the table too, but we all know that's never going to happen for Tatum.

So this is my calling my shot for 10 years from now. I'm putting games played, minutes played, 3PM, and scoring as four all time records that I envision having Jayson Tatum's name next to them. It would also be very cool if he was able to do what all the other legends did and also win some titles (or even one, I'm not greedy) along the way. 

But as someone who loves witnessing NBA history/Celtics franchise history, Jayson Tatum is probably our best bet to get it.