Celtics Star Jayson Tatum 'Couldn't Be Happier' For Magic Rookie, Duke 'Brother' Paolo Banchero
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ORLANDO - The Duke men's basketball brotherhood continues to prosper.
When Orlando Magic forward Paolo Banchero took the floor Saturday night against Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics, it was a matchup between two of Duke's recent top draftees.
Tatum, the No. 3 overall pick from the 2017 NBA Draft, has emerged into one of the league's premier players after one season at Duke. He proved that by scoring 40 points in Saturday's game against the Magic. But Banchero wasn't a slouch either. He scored 23 points on his own, becoming the first teenager in NBA history to score 20+ points in the first three games of his career.
Tatum explained after the game how excited he was for Banchero and his future.
"I couldn’t be happier for him or his family," Tatum said via USA Today's Cody Taylor. "I know how hard he works and how good of a person he is. [To be] that size and to be that height and that bulky, and essentially can do everything on the floor, he’s only obviously going to continue to get better. I was happy I finally got a chance to compete against him. Obviously, we’re going to have many more battles in the future."
Banchero has said in the past how he looks up to Tatum and shared how he approached the matchup during his first game against him.
"That is an elite player," Banchero said about Tatum. "That is a guy who you always got to have an eye on. When I was guarding him, just trying to make it hard for him. He is going to make shots so you can’t let that discourage you. You gotta step up on the next possession and guard him."
Banchero and the Magic play Tatum and the Celtics again in Boston on Dec. 16 and 18.
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