The most important player on each and every NBA team this season

Boston Celtics — Jayson Tatum

The Boston Celtics are one of the few contending teams that was hard to identify a most important player for. A lot of contenders are built around one central star who is essential to that team’s identity, even if there are other stars around them. The Celtics are the opposite of that.

Boston’s ethos as a team is basically that no one player is crucially important, because the collective is so damn good. Even without legitimate star players in Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward, the Celtics made it all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals and nearly to the NBA Finals.

To pick the Celtics’ most important player, it’s important to look at Boston’s dual mission of contending now and contending later. Kyrie, Hayward and Al Horford are very important to Boston contending now, but they aren’t as big of factors in the Celtics being very good half a decade from now. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are.

With apologies to Brown, who is a phenomenal young talent, Tatum gets the slight edge here because he looked like a legitimate franchise player during the Celtics’ postseason run. That’s nearly unheard of for a rookie. It’s no surprise Boston has no interest in trading one of its young talents for Kawhi Leonard — the Celtics honestly don’t need the help, especially not at that price.

Tatum might find himself in a somewhat lesser role if all of the other Celtics are healthy, but he can rest easy knowing that he’s going to be an integral part of a great team for a long, long time. Even if he’s not the best player on the team right now, Jayson Tatum is the most important player in Boston.