Boston Celtics' Brad Stevens to Jayson Tatum after Finals - Get some rest

After Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum had a rough NBA Finals, Brad Stevens had a simple message for his team's franchise player.

«I just told him to go on vacation,» Stevens, Boston's president of basketball operations, said with a smile during a videoconference call with reporters after Boston's season ended with a loss to the Golden State Warriors in six games in the league's championship round. «Go get some rest.

»This guy gave us everything he had. When you look at the minutes, when you look at the games played… I've said this many times: He's a superstar that doesn't want to sit. He wants to play, he wants to play all the time. I thought that in the Finals, obviously, I think he would be the first to say that he would like to have some of those moments back, but I thought there were other contributing factors to how he played."

The 24-year-old superstar, coming off being named to the All-NBA first team, had an up-and-down playoffs. He finished the postseason with the most turnovers any player has had in a single playoffs in NBA history, and in the Finals he shot 50% from the field once and under 40% four times against Golden State — including shooting just 31.6% on 2-point shots.

As a result, not surprisingly, both 2-point shooting and playmaking were issues not just for Tatum but the team as a whole in seeing Boston fall just short of its goals. However, Stevens said it should be remembered just how good both Tatum and Jaylen Brown have already been to this point in their careers in terms of postseason success and that the team wouldn't have gotten to where it did without them.

Stevens pointed specifically to Tatum's 46-point game on the road in Milwaukee in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference semifinals as proof of