You have to lead with Jayson Tatum after he drops 44 points to help the Celtics beat the Hornets, particularly one game removed from a 54-point outing to beat the Nets, but what exactly is there to say?

The longer this run by Tatum stretches, the more it feels like we’ve said everything we can say about him. He’s unquestionably a top-10 player at this point, and he’s knocking on the door of top-five in the NBA. He should be All-NBA First Team. Last time we did takeaways, we wrote about Tatum’s future MVP candidacy. There’s very little he could do this season to garner votes, although team employees have taken up the call. We could write about his spiking 3-point percentage — he was 6-for-9 on Wednesday, and he’s up to 34 percent for the season — but one of the big takeaways over the last few weeks has been that Tatum is more than a make-or-miss player now. He can score and assist in many different ways, and increasingly the Celtics are learning to play off of him.

On Wednesday, Tatum shattered the Hornets’ defense down the stretch. He hit his second 3-pointer of the evening with 37 seconds remaining in the third quarter, and he made his fifth with 8:27 remaining in the fourth — capping off an impressive run that all but ended the game.

All the Hornets had left was to keep Tatum from hitting 50, and they did it with defenses Ime Udoka termed “junk” after the game — double-, triple-, and quadruple-teaming him in the final minutes to force the ball out of his hands. Other Celtics players feasted on all the open space, but Tatum was so automatic you could hardly blame the Hornets — who played zone for most of the game — for choosing one poison over the other.

“He’s getting the matchups he wants and getting to the spots he wants, and getting the shots he wants,” Udoka said. “That’s a huge luxury to have when you have a guy who can do that. But the guys are feeding off him as well.”

Tatum chuckled and shook his head when a reporter asked if we saw “angry Tatum.”

“I think it was just kind of that time,” he said. “It was like, ‘Alright, let’s get this done.’ And I think we all have that same mindset not to play around with the game and just go figure it out.”

2. The Hornets actually looked like they might make some noise in the third quarter — a 13-2 run erased a seven-point Celtics lead, and Miles Bridges in particular looked like he found some energy on the second night of a back-to-back.

Then Al Horford hit one of the bigger shots of the game — a stern 3-pointer from the top of the key that seemed to settle the Celtics down. His shot was a prelude to Tatum’s offensive explosion, as well as a nice stretch by Jaylen Brown that helped the Celtics put some distance between themselves and the Hornets.

I thought this was quietly was one of the bigger shots of the game – Al Horford going dad mode and getting the kids to settle down after the Hornets went on a 13-2 run to take the lead. pic.twitter.com/HsJ6b6cVZ1

“When the game is close, you going back and forth, and you come to a timeout and emotions are high, things like that, and we all just look at each other and everybody got that look in their eye that we’re going to figure it out,” Tatum said. “Everybody is going to do what it takes. And when you win a game like that, especially on the road, that’s basketball.”

3. The Celtics tallied 30 assists. They now have 10 games with 30 or more this season and have gone 9-1 in those games (their lone loss was their highest total — 34 assists in their double-overtime season-opener against the Knicks).

“What I pointed out to the group is Derrick [White] and Marcus [Smart], 17 assists and one turnover only so they are doing a great job finding guys, passing up good shots to get great ones for others,” Udoka said. “That’s what it is going to take going forward. You can’t rely on one guy, two guys to score all the points. We want to have an unselfish team that plays a good appealing brand of basketball and I think we are doing that. We are making the extra pass and getting guys wide open looks, that’s all you can ask for.”

4. White had a nice game with 11 points, eight assists and three blocked shots. Afterward, reporters asked him about his skills as a charge-taker — White is fifth in charges drawn per game and tied for second total at 22.

“That’s kind of something I’ve done my whole life, just kind of standing there, being in the right position and just take the charge,” White said. “I haven’t gotten too many since I’ve been here, but I got a couple today and it’s just something that I’ve done my whole life.”

In previous seasons, Smart has prided himself on being No. 1 on the team in charges taken, but he has just 11 this season — 10 behind White.

“Not even top 10. Come on, Smart,” White mused.

The Celtics show up frequently on the NBA’s hustle stats. Smart is eighth in deflections and tied for first in loose balls recovered per game. Williams is tied for second in loose balls recovered total, and he and Horford are both top-10 in shots contested per game.

5. The Celtics are now just half a game behind the Bulls for fourth in the Eastern Conference — an important threshold to cross, because it would earn them home-court advantage in the first round. They are 1.5 games behind the Sixers, two games behind the Bucks and still four games behind the Heat in first.

The Celtics — who have the sixth-most difficult remaining schedule according to Tankathon — still have a head-to-head apiece with the Bucks and the Heat.

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