NBA Draft 2024 live updates

The Boston Celtics, back atop the NBA world, must be looking down at their brethren with bemusement.

For essentially the entirety of the seven seasons that Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have played together, a not-zero cross-section of pundits and fans have more or less insisted that the two of them should be broken up, and one — almost always, but not always, Brown — should be traded.

The criticism was relentless: redundant skills, including inconsistent shooting, an unwillingness to share the ball with each other and with teammates, supposed friction between the two.

Every year, Boston’s front office refused to move one of them (Brown) out of town, even as the C’s failed to break through their quite high ceiling year after year and secure the franchise’s 18th NBA championship.

It took a while, but Tatum and Brown (or, if you prefer, Brown and Tatum) had the last word.

They found common ground; they improved on their deficiencies, and they led Boston to a league-best 64-18 regular season mark, followed by a no-doubt about it 16-3 postseason including a decisive 4-1 victory over the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals.

Yes, they got help from Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porziņģis, acquired last summer by team president Brad Stevens. But Tatum/Brown (or Brown/Tatum) were the catalysts for Boston’s latest championship. Brown was named both Eastern Conference finals and finals MVP, and Brown singled out Tatum as his “partner in crime” afterward.

The moral of the story? Get two All-Star forwards, and you, too, can build a championship team.

If only it were that easy. But having multi-dimensional wings who can handle, shoot, facilitate and score, and who can switch and defend at the other end, is a near-must for any team hoping to realistically contend in the game today.

Luckily, for those 29 teams now chasing Boston, this year’s draft provides solid potential among the wing prospects, including a potential No. 1 overall selection in France’s Zaccharie Risacher.