One of the players most responsible for the Boston Celtics’ deep run in the 2018 NBA Playoffs has been rookie guard Jayson Tatum, who has averaged 18 points per game throughout the postseason. Tatum, selected by the Celtics with the third pick in last year’s NBA Draft, can beat defenders with a variety of dazzling offensive moves, including an accurate and consistent fadeaway jumper.
Tatum’s fadeaway looks a lot like Kobe Bryant’s, and that’s no coincidence. As Tatum tells the Wall Street Journal, he mastered his own version of the difficult shot by doing exactly what you’d expect any other 20-year-old to do: Watching videos of Bryant’s fadeaway on YouTube.
During Bryant’s 20-year-career, the fadeaway (which was previously a key part of Michael Jordan’s arsenal as well) became one of his most notable calling cards, and as a result, it’s all over YouTube. Fans have made mixtapes featuring his best fadeaways. They’ve chronicled his best fadeaway against each NBA team. The official NBA channel even released its own mini-movie about that one skill. To date, it has more than 2.1 million views.
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A good portion of those views have likely come from Tatum. When he was a teenager, he had a trainer who instructed him to watch Kobe Bryant videos on YouTube in order to analyze the Los Angeles Laker’s footwork. Tatum gladly completed the assignment. “I’ve been watching Kobe ever since I can remember,” he told the WSJ. “Not just watching the dunks, but actually trying to learn. I think I learned that at a very young age.”
Tatum is certainly not the only young athlete to pick up skills on the world’s top video site. Kenyan javelin thrower Julius Yego, a silver medalist at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, is known as “The YouTube Man,” a nickname that derives from his preferred training methods. On the other side of the wide world of sports, Winter Olympian Adam Edelman learned how to ride a skeleton sled by watching YouTube.
As more athletes born in the online video age grow up, expect more stories like these. And if young ballers want to improve their fadeaway jumpers via YouTube, they have plenty of resources at their disposal. After all, in addition to the Kobe Bryant videos, there are now some Jayson Tatum highlight reels to look at, too.
