Tatum Is 7-for-29 From Three and Still Leads the Celtics in Points and Assists. Four Box Scores, Added Up

Four games is not a season. But four box scores is enough to see who's doing what, so I added up every Celtics line from the official game logs, Detroit on Oct. 20 through Tuesday's overtime win over Brooklyn. The Celtics are 3-1. Here is how they got there.

Start with the guy everybody is watching. Jayson Tatum has 112 points in four games, 28.0 a night, plus 32 assists, eight a game, and 25 rebounds. He leads the team in both points and assists. He is also 7-for-29 from three, about 24 percent, and 37-for-86 from the field overall. What's keeping the scoring up is the free-throw line: 31-for-36. Eighteen of those makes came in one night, on 22 tries, against the Nets.

That Brooklyn game is the one people will remember. Tatum scored 40 in 42 minutes, and the box score says he did it on 10-for-20 shooting. In overtime, with the Celtics down 124-123, Brooklyn's Mikel Brown Jr. missed a layup with 2.3 seconds left, Paul George grabbed the rebound, Boston called timeout, and Tatum hit a 17-foot turnaround jumper off a Derrick White pass as time expired, according to the official play-by-play. A referee review confirmed it. Final: 125-124.

The opener was the opposite. In the 121-113 loss in Detroit, Tatum went 6-for-23 with 0-for-7 from three for 13 points, though he had 11 assists. George bailed out the night with 38 points on 12-of-21 shooting and 7-of-12 from deep.

The Knicks game in between was the cleanest version of Tatum so far: 36 points on 14-of-26 shooting, nine rebounds and seven assists in a 107-103 win. Boston won the third quarter 33-24 and New York never led by more than five, per the box score. Queta added 15 off the bench, and Mitchell Robinson, Jordan Walsh and Queta have combined for 55 rebounds in four games.

Which brings us to George. Through four games he has 89 points, 22.3 a night, and is 14-for-32 from three, nearly 44 percent. He also leads the team with nine steals. Between him and Tatum, that's 201 of Boston's 479 points.

Now the quiet guys, because this is where it gets interesting. Sam Hauser is 11-for-22 from three, 50 percent, and in 86 minutes over four games he has zero turnovers. Not few. Zero. Payton Pritchard is 10-for-21 from deep and dropped 28 on Chicago on Monday, going 7-for-10 from three in 22 minutes. And Neemias Queta is 11-for-19 from the field with 18 rebounds and a team-high seven blocks in just 78 minutes. He had 15 in the win over the Knicks.

Then there's the number that should bother somebody: turnovers. The Celtics have 62 in four games, 15.5 a game, including 24 in the blowout of Chicago. Derrick White, who has 25 assists, also has 14 turnovers, the most on the team. Tatum has seven, George 11.

As a team, Boston is shooting 64-for-166 from three, 38.6 percent, and holding opponents to 60-for-174, about 34.5 percent, according to the four box scores. The Celtics have scored 119.8 a game and allowed 111.8. They have been outrebounded slightly, 181 to 177, and outscored opponents in the paint 170 to 150, with 52 paint points against Brooklyn alone.

The schedule gets friendly fast. Friday at 7:30 p.m. the Bulls come back to TD Garden, four days after Boston beat them 134-99. In that one the Celtics led by as many as 40, forced 24 turnovers and shot 21-for-44 from three. Then it's a Sunday afternoon trip to Orlando, according to the team's schedule.

Dez's take: The scary part for the rest of the league is that Tatum is shooting like this and the team is still 3-1. Seven threes in 29 tries is not who he is, and he's already drawing fouls and running the offense with eight assists a game. If the jumper shows up, the scoring average goes up from 28. The worrying part is White coughing it up 3.5 times a game. That's not a Bulls problem. That's a playoff problem if it sticks.

And give Hauser his flowers. Fifty percent from three with no turnovers is the exact job description, and he's doing it.

What we still don't know: whether the turnover number is a four-game blip or a trend, and how long Boston can lean on George's three-point shooting at this rate.