Amile Jefferson Wins Again
He does a lot of that actually
In the excitement of watching Jayson Tatum win his first NBA championship, we forgot to mention the other Blue Devil who will be getting a ring and that’s Boston assistant coach Amile Jefferson.
Jefferson, who was a fifth-year senior at Duke when Tatum was there as a freshman, has a habit of winning. Jefferson won four Pennsylvania Independent Schools Tournament titles and finished high school at Friends Central with a record of 98-14.
At Duke, he was called on as a freshman due to injuries and was not ready. But he was always a team-first guy. This was never more true than in 2014-15, when he was asked to come off the bench as an older player. He willingly took that role and helped lead Duke to a national title.
He was a mentor to Tatum in his final year and obviously that worked out well. You expect that Tatum gave him a solid recommendation when the Celtics were hiring.
We don’t know exactly what Jefferson’s role with the Celtics was this year, but the pattern continues: high school, college or the NBA, his teams tend to win championships. His coaching future appears to be quite bright, but given what we’ve seen of him so far, that’s not a surprise. s