When Jayson Tatum was just a first-grade student, his teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. The youngster answered matter-of-factly, "An NBA player." Did his teacher readily support his dream? "Pick a realistic profession, please," she quipped. But Jayson's single mom didn't let that teacher rest on her laurels for long. "I was livid," Brandy Cole recalls. "I went into the school the next day and talked to the teacher, and it wasn't a two-way conversation. I said, 'Ma'am, with all due respect, if you ask him a question and he answers, I don't think it's appropriate to tell him that's something he can't achieve when I'm at home telling him anything he can dream is possible.'" Tatum and his mom may have struggled a bit then. But now, Jayson is a high-flying Celtic, cruising through the rarified NBA stratosphere, focused on finding a way to get Boston past their nemesis, the L.A. Lakers.