NEW YORK — The Celtics needed scoring in the fourth quarter of a win last week in Charlotte, so they went to rookie Jayson Tatum, and he delivered. Kyle Kuzma broke the Lakers scoring record for a Christmas Day game and has been putting up points at a rate that the Lakers have not seen from a rookie since the immortal Jerry West almost 60 years ago. The Jazz had to find a player who was willing to take over late in games — and also had the offensive repertoire to get the job done — and settled on first-year guard Donovan Mitchell.
Welcome to the new world of NBA rookies, where 19-year-olds are taking on challenges, playing major roles and not shaking in their sneakers at the first sign of trouble — or even when they encounter a certain Cleveland superstar.
When Kuzma went for 38 points in the Lakers’ top win of the season against the Rockets, he became the first rookie in NBA history to score at least 38 points while making at least seven 3-pointers and at least 70 percent of his shots. Those would be tremendous numbers for a top pick, but Kuzma was still available late in the first round, until the Lakers took him at No. 27. Afterward, he was asked about scaling the heights against some of the very best competition the NBA has to offer.
"I’ve played like 30 games," Kuzma said. "I’ve played LeBron James, so it can’t get much higher after that."
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We’ve seen other rookies who showed right away that they were going to be dominant players. Some, like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, and more recently with Shaquille O’Neal, Tim Duncan and James, served notice once they walked in that they were going to be those rare transformational superstars.
But with the Class of 2017, it seems that a recent trend is continuing. Rookies like Tatum, Kuzma and Mitchell are acting as if they’ve been playing in the NBA for five or six years without the benefit of having experienced the NBA lifestyle for a full year like Ben Simmons, the No. 1 overall pick in 2016 who sat out the 2016-17 season following surgery to repair his broken foot.
"I think it’s becoming more and more the norm," Celtics coach Brad Stevens told Sporting News before a game in New York against the Knicks. "I don’t have any stats to back that up, but it feels like these guys are coming in at 19, 20 and 21, and they’re not scared of the moment. They’re not afraid of who they’re playing against."
Any theories as to why?
"It’s probably because they’ve seen all these guys at camps and have spent time with them," Stevens said. "And they also have been mentored by them and have worked out in the summer with them. So there’s a familiarity there that I think adds to the fact that they’re confident, already.
"But it’s interesting because a lot of the discussion has been about the 'one-and-done' players and if that’s a good thing or not. I can tell you, our last two one-and-done players have been pretty good, and they were pretty ready."
Tatum played only one season at Duke, while Mitchell played two seasons at Louisville and Kuzma spent three at Utah. Backing up Stevens’ point about showing that they belonged before they ever stepped into the league, they all battled against NBA stars before they ever played their first pro games.
Mitchell is represented by CAA, which also handles Chris Paul. That’s how Mitchell landed in Paul’s summer camp in Winston-Salem, N.C., after he declared for the draft. He went to the camp thinking he wasn’t ready for the NBA, and he was prepared to pull out of the draft and return for his junior season with the Cardinals, only to have Paul and Paul George, who was also on the scene, tell him that he could play on the next level.
"I told some of the people at CAA and Donovan, 'You'd be crazy to go back to school,'" Paul said. "What I want for him is to keep taking it one day at a time, don't get ahead of yourself. He loves the game. He has a great work ethic. And he can play."
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He also went to the perfect team, after the Jazz traded Trey Lyles and the No. 24 pick to Denver for his draft rights, at No. 13. The Jazz lost Gordon Hayward and George Hill to free agency. Ricky Rubio came in from the Timberwolves, but his long-term shooting problems have made him reluctant to shoot in crunch time.
Mitchell hasn’t had a problem assuming that workload. He wasn’t heavily recruited out of high school outside New York City. In fact, several schools, including Michigan and nearby UConn, saw him as what used to be known as the classic "tweener." At 6-3 and a hefty 210 pounds, the scouting report was that he wasn’t quick enough to play the point, and not a good enough shooter to be a shooting guard.
That same report followed him out of Louisville. But in Utah, Quin Snyder saw him as a basketball player, plain and simple. In this age of positionless hoops, Snyder knew he could get something out of Mitchell if he put him in the right spot. He’s topped all rookies so far, averaging 18.2 points per game on 44 percent shooting, which is just a shade better than Kuzma (17.5 points per game on 47.1 percent shooting).
"I’ve been following [Mitchell] and Kuzma, it’s a kind of friendly competition," said the soft-spoken Tatum, who is averaging 14.1 points on 50.8 percent shooting, including the top 3-point percentage in the league among qualified shooters. "They’ve been playing very well."
Tatum’s success was a little more predictable, with Celtics president Danny Ainge admitting that he probably still would have taken him with the No. 1 overall pick if he did not trade down with the Sixers to get the No. 3 overall pick, while adding what should be another premium No. 1 pick, either from from the Lakers or Kings, in the next few years.
From his first game, Tatum has had a calm demeanor he’s shown since high school, which translates into a mature, veteran presence when he’s been tested as Hayward’s replacement. Tatum acknowledges that his job has been made "easy for me," as defenses first are focused on stopping Kyrie Irving and Al Horford.
"That’s why I consider myself fortunate," Tatum said. "Those guys draw a lot of attention."
But as he’s proven, most recently when he came up big in the final minutes in a road win against Charlotte, he can still produce when the attention shifts in his direction.
"He's not afraid of the moment," Horford said. "One thing that helps him is he stays poised, very focused. It doesn't matter how the game has been going up until that point. He seems to make the right plays down the stretch."
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Horford thinks Tatum and the others have been helped by rule changes, along with how offensive-minded players with skills can thrive more than ever in today’s NBA. The way the games are called now, compared to when he entered the league in 2007 as the third overall pick following Kevin Durant, have brought out the best in his teammate and the two rookie surprises.
"Guys like Tatum and Kuzma have done a great job getting acclimated to the game right away," Horford said. "They can score the ball, and in the last few years, the game has become a 3-point shooting game. So if you can shoot three’s and defend a little bit, you can make an impact right away. Kuzma and Tatum are great examples of that."
In his one season at Duke, Tatum exhibited the kind of offensive skills and length that had Ainge sold early. On the other hand, Kuzma’s shooting stats over 96 games at Utah didn’t at all predict what the Lakers have been seeing so far.
He was largely viewed by NBA GMs and scouts as an average athlete without a position and, as one Western Conference GM put it, "a nice all-around player." He wound up shooting only slightly better than 50 percent for his college career, with dismal shooting numbers from 3-point range during all three seasons (32.4, 25.5 and 32.1) and the free throw line (63.3 percent for his career).
But the Lakers saw potential in the 6-9 Kuzma, from the time they first started honing in on him after his sophomore season at Utah. They loved his effort, and while other teams didn’t see where he could fit, LA projected him as a perimeter player who could get up and down the floor.
Kuzma was MVP of the championship game in the Las Vegas Summer League. That’s when the rest of the league started to think that Kuzma might have been held back by his college team's system. When it comes to those cases, Michael Jordan will forever be known as Exhibit A.
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One of the NBA’s top 3-point shooters now — he made 44 in only 90 attempts (49 percent) in one recent 16-game stretch, including his 31-point outing against Minnesota on Christmas — Kuzma started showing he could be a different player than the college version when he started to hold his own against NBA stars in summer games in Los Angeles.
"What’s been a pleasure for me to watch is how much he was in the gym this past summer," Warriors forward Draymond Green said. "Being in LA, you call him and he’s in the gym all day. Even on our nights off, he’s been in the gym. So it’s been great to watch and how seriously he’s taking it.
"He wants to be great. When you want to be great, you work and you get yourself a chance at it. He’s giving himself a shot at it. It’s been fun to watch."
Who’s had more fun watching Kuzma than the Lakers? Back in the Las Vegas Summer League, they never imagined that he would be outplaying their more celebrated rookie, Lonzo Ball, when they threw up the ball for real.
It's a whole new (and much younger) world in the NBA.
Listen to Mitch Lawrence on SiriusXM NBA Radio on The Starting Lineup, Above The Rim, NBA Today and NBA Weekend. Follow him on Twitter: @Mitch_Lawrence.
