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BOSTON -- It's entirely possible Jason Kidd was correct. Maybe Jayson Tatum isn't the Boston Celtics' best player.

It's also becoming increasingly evident it may not matter much.

On Sunday, in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, Boston took a 2-0 series lead against the Mavericks behind a 105-98 victory despite Tatum's brutally inefficient shooting night. He was a downright awful 6-of-22 from the field, was held to 18 points, and made only one of his seven 3-pointers. These shooting struggles that have plagued him most of this postseason.

Which is not to say he played poorly. 

Tatum's game is a kind of Rorschach test. If you're in search of a classic "best player," as Kidd coined Jaylen Brown on Saturday before Game 2, and you understandably look to offensive output and late-game scoring as part of that, Tatum may well come up short. But if you can see him, and Boston, for what each are -- something unique for a would-be championship team, and for a supposed superstar -- a different picture emerges altogether

Tatum on Sunday was a force as a creator (he had 12 assists), and he continued his rebounding prowess, often snatching boards (he had nine) at critical moments. He, like almost everyone of his teammates, is outstanding defensively. His excellence, however it's measured, adds up in the strange alchemy of this Boston team to a rarified and necessary ingredient in this historically great season.

So, yes, Tatum was really, really good -- along with several of his teammates. Brown dropped 21 points and dished seven dimes. Derrick White had 18, hit several big shots and poured in eight points in the fourth quarter -- a key closer with a clutch block as Dallas made a desperate late-game push. Jrue Holiday, who kept hounding and confounding Kyrie Irivng on defense, also had a team-high 26 points.

Holiday was probably, to use Kidd's words from Saturday, the Celtics' "best player" on Sunday.

But also: Who cares? 

It very-much appears this team has no need for a traditional star around whom everyone else orbits, looking for light when things get dark, turning to as a would-be savior. Dallas has that, yes, surely. Luka must be Luka, each and every night, for Dallas to have a chance against a team like these Celtics.

But that's because the Celtics and Mavericks are two teams built to win in absolutely opposite ways. 

Whereas like most NBA teams that win, or almost win, a title, the Mavs need their starpower to shine -- both their stars. 

But Boston is built differently. One of five or six guys can beat you. That seems to be what Kidd missed when he tried to stir things up. He's not up against two superstars. He's up against five of them, depending on the night, the moment, the specific need.

One moment, or game, it's Brown who fits that "best player" label. Sunday it was probably Holiday. In Game 1, at least early on, it was Kristaps Porzingis. It has obviously often been Tatum, this team's only All-NBA Player this season. Or White.

Another factor for Boston undermines the traditional idea that a lone superstar, or two, must step up to win you four games in the NBA Finals: Boston's defense.

That alone may be enough to win a championship, whatever, or whoever, steps up on offense be damned. 

That Celtics' D held Dallas to 98 points on Sunday night. They held the Mavericks to just 89 points in Game 1. And since the Celtics, especially when Al Horford is off the floor, can switch almost anyone on defense and not lose the advantage, even their defense, by nature a team effort, is even more woven together with an idea of the collective over any individual's singular excellence.

There was a moment late in the game Sunday night that felt like a perfect example of how Boston as a team can function beyond the approach Dallas uses, in which Luka Doncic or Kyrie Irving must single-handedly carry their team.

Dallas had cut the game to five with less than a minute to play, and PJ Washington was about to throw home a dunk to make it just a three-point game. You could feel the Boston Garden reeling, and there was a real sense the Mavs might steal one.

Then White blocked him at the rim, Holiday pulled down the rebound, and in a flash Jaylen Brown ended up finishing at the other end with a driving layup that made it a seven-point game.

Just like that, three Celtics -- none named Tatum -- flipped the momentum. The game effectively ended there, a metaphor of a moment where Tatum, in a fourth quarter in which he'd gone 1 of 7, was absent. And in which that absence didn't mean anything.

Turns out Kidd's mind game from Saturday, a clear effort to try to drive a wedge between Tatum and Brown -- or to try and get Tatum to go all hero-ball in Game 2 -- failed because it was the wrong game to play. 

You can't stop a team by playing who's-the-team's-best-player parlor tricks if the team doesn't have, nor need, one in order to beat you.

Perhaps Kidd should have worried less about rankling the Celtics stars and more about figuring out what exactly is going on with Irivng. 

Because Dallas is decidedly not Boston, and they do need their best player and second-best player to play like it in order to win.

Luka did his part, again. He had a dazzling 32 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists on the night despite being banged up. But he was largely alone in the effort. Irving had just 18 points, missed all three of his 3s, and despite six assists often looked timid in those moments when a Dallas push might have further tested the Celtics.

Tatum, who was just one rebound shy of a double-double, was probably Boston's fourth most-important player Sunday night as all of Luka's teammates looked to him to win it. 

Is that the same thing as the fourth "best?"

I thought again, as the game ended, of Kidd saying Brown, not Tatum, was Boston's best player, and the outrage that had ensued. 

Mind games! Silliness! Hot takery given a boost by a coach who should know better!

When I'd heard Kidd say it, my first resection had actually been: Total agreement. I do think, if we were to try and measure and assess and rank Boston's players, that Brown, for me, is the best of them.

But, with Boston up 2-0, and Luka's singular heroics clearly not yet adequate to the challenge of this fully formed, deep, beat-you-with-anyone-and-from-anywhere-on-the-floor Boston team, it turns out the deeper truth isn't about whether or not Tatum is his team's actual best player

The scarier thought -- and the one Kidd better start wrestling with, the mind game that has boomeranged back toward him -- is that whoever is or isn't Boston's best player doesn't seem to matter much in the slightest.