THE BLUEPRINT

WHEN JAYSON TATUM WAS A KID, HIS FAVORITE PLAYER WAS KOBE BRYANT. THE CELTICS ALL-STAR FOLLOWED EVERYTHING BEAN DID ON THE COURT IN THE HOPES OF GETTING HIS GAME AS CLOSE TO 24’S AS HE POSSIBLY COULD.

- ALEX SQUADRON

I CAN REMEMBER when he was a little boy—this is how obsessed he was,” recalls Brandy Cole, the mother of Celtics All-Star Jayson Tatum. “I asked him, What do you want to be when you grow up? His first answer in life was, ‘Kobe.’”

Brandy tried to explain to her son: You can’t be Kobe. You can be an NBA player, like Kobe. But you can’t be Kobe.

Jayson refused to accept that. And when mom dared to suggest that he could one day be better than Kobe, her son damn near lost his mind.

“I was like, Can’t nobody be better than Kobe!” Tatum remembers. “It didn’t even make sense to me.”

Not too long ago, Jayson Tatum hated the Boston Celtics. As a kid growing up in St. Louis, MO—a city without a hometown NBA team—he fell in love with Kobe and the Lakers. That love, dating back to when Jayson was 4 years old, ran deep. It was an obsession.

He retreated to his bedroom and cried when Boston beat L.A. in the 2008 Finals. He was ecstatic when Kobe got his revenge in 2010, winning his fifth and final championship.

“From the beginning, [Kobe] was always my favorite player,” Tatum explains. “I wanted to be just like him. He was my biggest basketball inspiration.”

By the age of 6, Jayson was getting into heated arguments with Brandy about who was better, Kobe or Michael Jordan. She watched MJ and the Bulls rule the League in the ’90s. Jayson’s allegiance, of course, was always to the Mamba.

In every way possible, Jayson tried to emulate his idol. He was shooting turnaround, fadeaway jumpers by third grade. And it wasn’t like he’d just do it in a game. Brandy would peer out the window and see Jayson working on those moves in the backyard of their home in University City.