Late in the fourth quarter, Jayson Tatum went down with a non-contact leg injury. The kind you never want to see.
Injuries are the worst part of professional sports.
Players spend their entire lives sacrificing, grinding, and working on their games. If they’re lucky, they make it to the big leagues. However, the higher level you reach, the greater the risk of injury. It’s the nature of the beast. Still, that doesn’t stop it from sucking.
From a fan’s perspective, you spend years, even decades, rooting for someone, watching them grow and mature in the search for greatness. In many ways, they become ingrained in your experience.
For me — and I assume many others — Jayson Tatum is that player. I’ve watched 99% of the games he’s played in, with the other 1% being Team USA games that got no coverage where I’m at. I’ve trawled through hundreds of hours’ worth of his game tape, following his development, improvements, successes and failures.
To be honest, I could say that about most long-tenured members of the roster. Yet, for some reason, Tatum has been the guy I’ve followed the closest, perhaps because he’s the most talented. Or maybe because I relate to him as someone who became a father at a young age.
So, waking up to find out he’s potentially ruptured his Achilles tendon is a tough pill to swallow. Not only because of the implications that this injury could have on the Celtics, both now and in the future, but because he’s a guy we cheer for and have watched develop into a top-five player in the world.
“Tonight is tough,” Jaylen Brown said during his postgame news conference. “I think everybody’s at a loss for words… I’m not sure how bad it is. It didn’t look great. But I think everybody is more concerned with that (than the loss).”
He’s a player who has given everything to Boston and its fanbase. An ironman who fights to play in every game. A consummate professional who steers clear of scandal and bad press. And the first player since Paul Pierce — if not Larry Bird — that you felt had a genuine chance of positioning himself among the greatest Celtics of all-time, both in the rafters and on Boston’s imaginary Mt. Rushmore.
Don’t get me wrong, Tatum’s career isn’t over. But if it is an Achilles rupture, he will be out for a while. I mean, my daughter might be graduating high school (16 over here in the UK, and she turns 15 later this year) or be close to it, before he’s playing 30+ minutes per night again. That’s a wild realization.
However, Tatum could potentially be facing a long road back. The hope is that he follows the Kevin Durant trajectory and returns as a still-elite superstar capable of spearheading a franchise. The good news is that, like Durant, Tatum’s game isn’t predicated on elite athleticism or an electric first step. He’s a skills-based talent with elite processing speed and ridiculous fast-twitch reactions. An Achilles tear won’t sap much, if any, of those skills.
We may have to accept that Durant is an outlier. Perhaps we could list Klay Thompson in that list, if he didn’t have the ACL injuries to go with it. Fortunately, we’re in a whole new era of medical and sports science, and Tatum takes care of his body, so I’m choosing to remain optimistic.
Still, Tatum will need to adjust. Assuming the worst, I doubt we ever see him push back against load management again. Nor do I expect him to shoulder such a wide-ranging load where he initiates the offense, leads the scoring and is among the team’s leading rebounders. His approach will change, as will his impact, for better or worse.
While we all wait for the official diagnosis, social media will be awash with notions of tearing down the roster, or trading Jaylen Brown (among others) in search of a re-tooling process. After all, not only did the Celtics lose Tatum to injury, they surrendered another big lead to go down 3-1 against the New York Knicks.
“The loss is the loss,” Al Horford said postgame. “More importantly, it’s Jayson I’m worried about.”
Those reactions are fair. Everybody is entitled to their opinion, just as they’re entitled to their personal fan experiences. Nevertheless, the series isn’t over. There is still at least one more game to be played. Counting out the Celtics, especially now, would be risky. Brown will have a point to prove, and if Kristaps Porzingis was ever going to show up in this postseason, now has to be the time.
We will have MONTHS to break down what could or couldn’t happen with this team during the summer. I’m sure there will be a wealth of discussion points and a non-stop myriad of trade talk.
For now, though, I want to live in the moment. I want to wait and see how bad things really are. Only then can we start to compartmentalize what the next 1-2 years have in store for us all.
As for any analysis of Monday’s game…It didn’t feel right to write about anything other than this. I wanted to write about this. There’s always tomorrow to look back at the defense, or whatever else stands out. Today, though, well, today is about Tatum and as much as it pains me to admit, later this week will probably be about how this team looks by the start of next season.
Hopefully, when the inevitable injury update drops, we learn that things aren’t as bad as they first seemed. Either way, though, it’s never nice to see someone go down like this, and it’s worse when it’s a player you’ve watched flourish for years on end.
Injuries are the worst part of sports. They’re cruel, random, and indiscriminate. But they also remind us why we care.
Heal up, JT.
CelticsBlog graciously allowed this article to be cross-posted from my growing “Celtics Chronicle” newsletter.
