Jayson Tatum is killing it.
The Boston Celtics star has attacked his rehab with nearly unprecedented resolve, working out up to six days a week. That’s led to a lot of conversation about a potentially earlier return for the franchise player.
The positive news doesn’t mean it’s automatic he returns this season and both the team and Tatum won’t put any sort of timeline on a possible return. But the comments are about as positive as you could hope for if you’re a Celtics fan.
From Tatum’s interview with Sports Illustrated:
“And it’s a lot of things that could happen. I joke about it all the time, like, ‘I’m not going in there six days a week for no reason.’ Me and Nick, I told him early on, I circled the date on the calendar and I was like, ‘Yo, I’m going to be a hundred percent ready by this day.’ Now there’s conversations to be had after that and what makes sense and what might not make sense, but I’m going to do my part that by this day I know I will be a hundred percent.”
Then there’s this quote from Tatum’s surgeon, Martin O’Malley via People.com:
"I don't think I've seen a person's calf look as strong as his. At six or eight weeks, he was doing double heel rises. He worked his calf so hard that the side effect of loss of strength, I don't think he's going to have any."
That’s all about as promising as you can possibly get after an Achilles tear. The question is what this means for the Celtics this season.
This is a transition year for the Celtics. It’s not a rebuilding season; they still have Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, Payton Pritchard, and enough players to field a competitive team, especially if some of their younger talent can pop. But those are the types of seasons that often have mixed results.
Jayson Tatum's accelerated timeline could create tough decisions for Boston
If the Celtics get to midseason in January, hovering a few games above .500, what does that mean for the decision to bring Tatum back? They’re not good enough to be considered a serious contender, but with Tatum back, maybe they could make a surprise run, even with diminished expectations for him coming off that kind of injury.
They’re also in that scenario not bad enough to justify tanking. It wouldn’t really accomplish much for them.
If the Celtics suffer more injury trouble and are not as good as they hope to be on top of it, say they’re on pace for 35-ish wins, that makes a decision to hold off on Tatum’s return easy.
Likewise, if they outperform expectations and are rolling at a 48-to-52-win pace, and Tatum’s physically ready, it makes sense to get him back and try and pull off what would be one of the most improbable title runs we’ve seen.
But oftentimes with a major player in this situation, you wind up right in the middle. The team’s good enough to hold out hope the player can return, but also not good enough to be sure it will make a difference. It also often leads to players trying to justify the team’s shortcomings with “Well, when (Tatum) gets back…”
Tatum’s also early in this process. The real grind for recovering from this type of injury comes when things slow down and when minor setbacks occur. Players have to be so cautious not to risk re-injury and major setbacks that small ones can deter them. And once the return timeline gets pushed back once, it’s likely to be so again, which is one reason why teams and players never want to give out hard return dates.
Tatum is an elite player, and the way he’s attacked his rehab is a testament to his work ethic and passion for the game. There are pathways here where the Celtics have one of the most dramatic-positive seasons you can possibly have under these conditions, but Boston has to be careful not to get stuck in a limbo situation that can drain the healthy players they have without anything real to show for it.
Boston’s walking a narrow edge this season when it comes to Jayson Tatum’s potentially unprecedentedly early return.