Although it’s been a team effort, Jayson Tatum has been on a tear during this eight-game win streak, propelling the Boston Celtics to the best record in the NBA and 4.5 games ahead in the Eastern Conference.

During this eight-game win streak, Tatum has averaged 33-points, 10.5 rebounds, and 5.6 assists per game with 44/36/93% shooting splits and has been a +93 in this span.

Tatum is starting to take the reigns over in the NBA as an MVP frontrunner and reintroducing the Celtics as the team to beat in the NBA.

Here’s what Tatum said after Boston finally defeated the Golden State Warriors on Thursday night at the TD Garden, the first time hosting them since the NBA Finals.

“I think the first time we played them in San Francisco, I felt like we bought into that. Rematch of the Finals, ABC game, first time back since we lost. Everybody wanted to win so bad. I think that was the first time all season that we played out of character, that we played tense. And we just kind of talked about it today, like, the fact of the matter is we lost. We lost the championship. No one win can bring that back. We can’t go back in time and change that.

So we didn’t look at this as a rematch of the Finals. It’s just one game against a great team with great players and obviously a great coach. But it was just one game. Whether we won or lost tonight, we didn’t celebrate or hang a banner or anything. We still got a game on Saturday.”

The Celtics came into this game with the proper mindset needed to be successful against this team, not reliving the past as you can’t change the outcome from last year’s Finals loss. This game was all about maturity and growth, and it was great to see from this group.

The Celtics play again on Saturday in an early afternoon game at 5:00 PM on the road to Canada to take on the Toronto Raptors

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Photo Credit: AP Photo