Jayson Tatum reveals reason why he wanted to be in first season of Netflix docuseries

"I was like, ‘No, I want to be a part of the first one.’ And I was like, ‘I think we’re gonna win a championship.’"

Jayson Tatum is far from the only NBA superstar featured in “Starting 5” — the new Netflix-produced docuseries that follows some of basketball’s top talents on and off the court.

As the title of the series implies, the show follows five NBA stars in its first season: Tatum, LeBron James, Jimmy Butler, Anthony Edwards, and Domantas Sabonis. Given that it followed all five players throughout the 2023-24 season, Tatum figured to earn plenty of the spotlight — considering he helped lead Boston to a championship in June.

But speaking to reporters on Thursday, Tatum acknowledged that Netflix’s producers gave him the option to wait until season two of the series if he wanted to be the star of the show.

Even with Tatum’s standing as one of the brightest young stars in the NBA, any series where he shared the spotlight with a legend like James was going to inevitably take some of the focus off of Boston’s top forward.

But Tatum stressed that he wanted to be featured in that first season — due in large part to the high expectations he set for his team during that 2023-24 campaign.

“I remember I watched ‘Quarterback,’” Tatum said Thursday at the Auerbach Center. “When they came to me with the idea, at the time they said LeBron was in it and honestly he was like, ‘Yo, you could wait until Season 2, and obviously you could maybe be the star of Season 2.’ I was like, ‘No, I want to be a part of the first one.’ And I was like, ‘I think we’re gonna win a championship.’ And we did.”

Tatum’s hopeful prognostication paid off for him, the Celtics, and Netflix — as the Celtics steamrolled the rest of the NBA en route to that sought-after 18th championship. Boston faced little resistance as it carved a swath through the league, losing just three games during playoff action.

Even though Tatum is featured throughout the series, the 26-year-old forward admitted that he wanted to get right to the end of the show to relive his championship triumph over the Dallas Mavericks.

“I ain’t gonna lie, I skipped to Episode 10 last night,“ Tatum said. ”I just wanted to see what that was like. And I was emotional, in a good way, reliving those moments of accomplishing a lifelong dream, all the behind-the-scenes stuff. It made me really joyful last night to watch that on TV just to relive that moment of us winning a championship.”

Tatum and the Celtics will get another opportunity to bask in their accomplishments on Oct. 22, when Boston will receive their championship rings and raise Banner 18 to the TD Garden rafters before its season opener against the Knicks.

Conor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023.