May 12, 2025, was a gut-wrenching night for Boston Celtics fans. They watched their team fall down three games to one against the New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals, and also saw Jayson Tatum suffer what turned out to be a ruptured right Achilles tendon.
Tatum’s injury was pretty clear from the moment he went down, but the day of waiting for confirmation was grueling.
Of course, that confirmation hit like a ton of bricks. Achilles injuries are no joke and take a significant amount of time to heal properly.
“I think, in general, people are going to tell a professional athlete like [Tatum] to expect eight to 12 months,” explained Dr. Kevin R. Stone of The Stone Clinic, during an interview with Forbes back in May.
Celtics fans need to weather their expectations for Tatum's return timetable
Waiting might be the theme of the 2025-26 Celtics season. Waiting for Tatum. Waiting for a winning streak. Waiting for the season to just be over with.
It’s probably not going to be pretty, and definitely won’t be like the past few campaigns in Boston.
With that being said, there’s no reason for Tatum to rush back to action. Fans see a timetable like the one provided by Dr. Stone and say, “Great, he’ll be back in March.” Then, they see photos of Tatum out at New England Patriots training camp with no walking boot, or at a community event in lovely Providence, Rhode Island, walking up three stairs at a time, and they buy into the idea of an early return even more.
Unfortunately, that’s just not the reality of the situation.
The only takeaway from the above is that Tatum is taking steps towards a healthy recovery, which is great. Putting an expectation on the speed of said recovery is a no-win situation.
Ask yourself, “What’s the best-case scenario if JT is back by March?”
A return wouldn’t instantly catapult Boston into the NBA Championship conversation. The team’s roster is still significantly weaker than it’s been over the past few years. Though Tatum helps, he doesn’t fix that problem entirely by himself.
There’s also a layer to this where he’s going to have to get his sea legs back. The former No. 3 overall pick isn’t going to step onto the court and all of a sudden by a 30 points per game scorer again. It’s going to take time for him to reacclimate to the speed of NBA games.
All of this isn’t to say that he’ll never be at the level he was pre-injury. We’ve seen others, like Kevin Durant, be just as deadly post-recovery. In Durant’s case, he took his time. He sat out for roughly 18 months before eventually making his Brooklyn Nets debut in December of 2020.
Excitement about Tatum’s recovery is great. Celtics fans just need to accept reality when talking about a potential return this season because it’s extremely unlikely.