With Celtics’ Jayson Tatum back, what was a plucky team could be formidable in the playoffs
BOSTON — The dunk, near the end of a first half of rust for Jayson Tatum, served notice to the Eastern Conference, not that the whole NBA wasn’t paying attention Friday night. For one evening, the talk wasn’t of tanking, or alleged cap circumvention, or NBA employees’ troubling — and, to be fair, still only alleged — gambling connections. The attention was on the parquet floor of TD Garden, and on the Boston Celtics, one of the league’s two iconic teams, and the Dallas Mavericks, featuring heralded rookie Cooper Flagg, New England’s own.
The building was electric and the credentials were plentiful, and TD was rocking. And you couldn’t take your eyes off Tatum. Neither could LeBron James.
Two hundred and 99 days removed from lying crumpled on the floor of Madison Square Garden, his right Achilles torn, his franchise cast into doubt and soon itself ripped apart, there was Tatum, leaping to put back Payton Pritchard’s missed jumper. The putback seemed to get Tatum going; after missing his first six shots from the floor, he made six of his next 10, en route to 15 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists. Jaylen Brown, in the midst of his own star turn this season, had 24, seven and seven. The Celtics, having been better than anyone thought they’d be after a rapid teardown of their roster last summer, suddenly have their two J’s back.
That should be frightening for the rest of the East. (Kevin Garnett, of the “Anything is Possible” Garnetts, had some thoughts.)
This is not a diss of the Detroit Pistons, who’ve been the conference’s best team all season, or of the Cleveland Caveliers, who went all in on trying to salvage their season by getting James Harden at the trade deadline, or of the New York Knicks, who’ve been up and down for a while, but still have Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns and a real chance for an extended playoff run. They each have superstars and will be tough to beat.
But injecting Tatum and his five all-NBA appearances into Boston’s already surprising season could upend all those dreams.
Tatum and Brown have already been on the league’s biggest stage, and won. None of Detroit’s current biggest stars, or New York’s, or Cleveland’s, have. The Celtics rallied around their star through his darkest days during his rehab, when the doubt and the slow progress closed in.
Pro athletes live their lives in the public eye. But that also includes when their bodies fail them, through injury and age. With his teammates’ help, and the Celtics’ coaches, and the team’s medical staff, Tatum was able to get off the deck.
“I don’t think any athlete thinks they’re going to get hurt,” he said Friday. “At least, I didn’t. It never crossed my mind. I thought I did everything right, took care of my body. I didn’t cheat the game. So, when it happened … really, it knocked me on my ass. It just made me rethink a lot of things. I had an idea of how my career was going to go, and one night, it changed.
“What I realized is that you know many great athletes who’ve gone through ups and downs in their career. But it’s another thing to live it. The things I want to accomplish are still in front of me, but how you get there looks different for everybody.”
Because of that, I share the view that thinking Tatum’s return will cause friction between him and Brown is silly. Brown was NBA Finals MVP two years ago. He’s more than proven himself. Tatum, I don’t believe, views this as 1 and 1A.
This season, and this team, will go as Brown goes — which, so far, has been pretty amazing. Boston traded away Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porziņģis (and, before the trade deadline, Anfernee Simons) — and, now, will be without center Nikola Vučević, acquired from the Chicago Bulls in the Simons deal, for a month or more after he broke a finger in the opening minutes against Dallas. But Brown has put the team on his back, averaging career highs in points, rebounds and assists. Tatum will get in where he can fit in.
Sure, Tatum has some ego — “I’m one of the — humbly — best basketball players in the world,” he said a couple of years ago, after he shook off three poor quarters to score 16 in the fourth in Game 6 against the Philadelphia 76ers. So do the other 449 players in this league. And he’s aware of where this team, this season, gets its juice.
“JT is intelligent enough to understand that JB is Batman for now, and he has to be Robin,” said a front office member of an Eastern Conference team with aspirations, who was granted anonymity in order to speak openly about another team.
The return of Jayson Tatum strengthens an already surprisingly successful Celtics team. (Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
It will take Tatum some time, maybe a few weeks, to find his wind and his legs again. How coincidental that the Celtics just happen to have six weeks of regular-season basketball left to get their superstar forward right before the playoffs, now that he’s back on the court. He was a +20 in 27 minutes Friday.
The Pistons are second in the league in defensive rating. But Boston was already second in the league in offensive rating, and they just got their six-time All-Star back. The Cavaliers have been ridiculous on D since getting Keon Ellis from the Kings at the trade deadline; Tatum averages 24.3 points per game in the postseason. The Knicks were beating Boston anyway in their series last spring before Tatum’s injury. Boston didn’t get much at all out of the ailing Porziņģis. But general manager Brad Stevens brought in veteran big Luka Garza from the Minnesota Timberwolves, and drafted guard Hugo González at the end of the first round. And Neemias Queta, in his first season as the full-time starter, has been terrific.
Still, this may not work, of course. Michael Jordan’s return to the Bulls in March 1995, after he spent a year-plus trying to make the major leagues as a baseball player, ended with Chicago losing to Orlando in the Eastern semis, and the Magic carrying ex-Bull Horace Grant off the floor on their shoulders. But the Jordan comparison isn’t really apt. Jordan was away from basketball for almost two years, having played his last basketball in June of ’93 in the finals. It took him a long summer in 1995, in between shooting “Space Jam,” to knock the rust off.
Tatum, as Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla noted before the game, had his Achilles surgery just hours after suffering the injury, leading Mazzulla to believe Tatum would do everything possible to play this year.
And he has.
“I think there’s a sense of gratitude, and a sense of perspective,” Mazzulla said. “At the end of the day, you saw a guy at his most vulnerable state, and you’re seeing that journey back. And the journey may start today, but there’s no end game to that.”
Humbly, Tatum wasn’t one of the best players in the world Friday. But he was more than impactful, and Brown was dominant, and Queta, who plays center in a very different way than Porziņģis, ran up and down the floor with abandon, ending with 16 points and 15 rebounds. And it was Gino Time after another blowout win, and everything seems possible again, where the team with more banners than any other team in the history of this league looks to be, again, on the hunt.
