LOS ANGELES — For two consecutive quarters on Sunday afternoon, the Los Angeles Lakers had absolutely no answer for Jayson Tatum.

The Boston Celtics’ star – and increasingly, that designation is a no-brainer – blew by Anthony Davis without issue when the Lakers’ All-Defense big switched onto him on the perimeter in the second and third quarters. When Tatum didn’t go by Davis, he pulled up from behind the arc (Tatum finished 4-for-7 from deep) with a variety of tricky moves off the bounce. When the Lakers tried other players on Tatum, including Alex Caruso and even LeBron James, the result was essentially the same.

Tatum was, in every sense, a superstar: A go-to scoring option who punished the defense, demanded a double team and defended hard. The Celtics fell 114-112, but Tatum was so good – 41 points on 12-for-20 shooting, tying his career-high – the rest of the Celtics could only marvel and wish they gave him more support.

“Tatum has reached a new height, man,” Jaylen Brown said after the game. “Superstar level. We all have to continue to improve and go with him. The way he continues to improve is unreal. We have to continue to find ways to help him reach his potential, but at the same time we have to find ways to win games and be the team we’re supposed to be. He’s playing unreal, man. He’s a joy to watch, and I wish we got the win. But to come in here and do what he did to the Lakers? Not many people can say they did that.”

As Tatum’s star has risen, his biggest area of improvement has been the pick-and-roll. Early in the season, he fell back on tendencies from previous seasons – pull-up jumpers, contested fade-aways and floaters. On Sunday, his first shot was a tough floater over Dwight Howard.

But recently, and especially on Sunday after a slow first quarter, Tatum has eschewed shots away from the rim and goes directly in for layups. That has coincided with more free throws as well – in his last five games, Tatum averaged 9.2 attempts at the line. Predictably, given that number and his 8.2 3-point attempts per game, Tatum is averaging just under 30 points per game. In the second and third quarters of Sunday’s game, Tatum poured in 35 of his 41 points.

“That’s what he does,” Brad Stevens said. “I realize that (41 points are) his career high, but he’s been at that level for us for a long time now.”

Stevens is right to an extent, and in fairness, asking new questions about Tatum is growing increasingly difficult, even though we need to generate new soundbites for our stories. But he’s also downplaying what appears to be the breakout stretch of a genuine NBA star.

Not that Tatum seems to mind much.

“I just wish we would have won,” he said when a reporter noted he might have opened some eyes. “That’s all that really matters. I know what I’m capable of, and my teammates know that. We know what each and every guy can do in here. But we just want to win at the end of the day.”

Two strategies ultimately seemed to work a bit against Tatum: The Lakers trapped him in the pick-and-roll late in the clock and forced him to make difficult passes, and they used Kentavious Caldwell-Pope effectively to keep the ball out of his hands.

The Celtics got a little sloppy, and when Tatum did successfully give the ball up, the rest of the team struggled. Taking Tatum’s hyper-efficient line out of the box score, the Celtics shot 41.2 percent from the field and 33.3 percent from three. That’s not a disaster, but it also isn’t likely to produce a win against a contender like the Lakers.

“We still should have won. We know that,” Tatum said. “We can’t make excuses when guys (like Kemba Walker) are out. That was definitely a game we should have won.”

But as teams try to trap more and more, Tatum will adjust. Trapping opens up opportunities when a player grows accustomed to dealing with the strategy. As he grows more experienced, he will get better at getting the ball even against an aggressive defender determined to deny him.

“If somebody is double-teamed and we make the right play, it should mean easy shots, either layups or wide-open shots,” Gordon Hayward said. “They’re trying to take the ball out of somebody’s hands, so they’re leaving somebody open. We have a lot of weapons, so we should take advantage of that.”

Still, the rest of the Celtics have certainly noticed what the 21-year-old forward on their squad appears to be doing.

“I think he has taken it to another level, and I think teams are starting to double a little bit,” Hayward said. “We’re going to have to be better playing off the double and learning how to attack that, especially when he’s rolling. That’s on all of us, but certainly he’s been tremendous for us. We’re going to need him to continue to be tremendous. …

“It’s tough. You have those big nights, we’ve got to come through for him.”

And the fact that Tatum did it against LeBron James and Anthony Davis, two of the best players in the league, on national TV in a pressure-packed rivalry game?

“It was a step in the right direction,” he said. “I definitely looked up – look up – to those guys and know how great they are individually. So I’m just trying to earn the respect of the guys that I look up to.”

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