Boston Celtics champion and Olympic gold medalist Jayson Tatum Tatum added new ink to his body to commemorate one of his many accomplishments over the past two seasons. After scoring 55 points in the 2023 NBA All-Star Game, setting a new record for most points ever scored in the star-studded NBA game, Tatum won the game’s Most Valuable Player Award. named after the late Kobe Bryant.
Tatum idolized the five-time Los Angeles Lakers champion. On his personal Snapchat, Tatum posted a photo of the All-Star Game MVP trophy tattooed on his right thigh.
Tatum is having an eventful summer. After winning his first championship with the Celtics, beating Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving and the Dallas Mavericks 4-1 in the 2024 NBA Finals, Tatum won his second Olympic gold medal with Team USA and is preparing for his eighth NBA season.
Jayson Tatum’s tributes to Kobe Bryant
While just winning the 2023 NBA All-Star Game MVP award is an honor in itself, winning the trophy named after your favorite player of all time, Kobe Bryant, made it even more special for Jayson Tatum. After his rookie season, Tatum participated in an offseason workout with Bryant, at which he described himself as “as happy as a kid in a candy store.”
On an episode of “All The Smoke,” hosted by former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, he spoke about what was this experience like.
“There was a lot of attention to detail,” Tatum said. “It wasn’t really anything I couldn’t do. It was a bunch of moves that he had seen me do and he had done. There were all these little things that you had to think about. That’s what I really took away from it all, the little things that he was thinking about that I hadn’t really heard anybody else do in the way that they approached the game.”
The five-time Celtics All-Star credits Kobe as one of the main reasons he plays the game and describes how Bryant’s death had a huge impact on him in a personal Instagram post.
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“Heartbroken. My hero. My idol,” Tatum wrote in the caption under a photo of a young Tatum standing next to Bryant. “The reason I started playing this game, the reason I fell in love with this game. Growing up wanting to be like you, until you became a mentor, beyond grateful for everything you’ve done for me.”
Then, before the Celtics’ Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Miami Heat, Tatum texted Kobe’s phone, “I got you today,” before finishing with 26 points, 10 rebounds and six assists to push Boston to the 2022 NBA Finals.
