The Boston Celtics' roster has been seriously depleted from this time last year to now. And while several of their offseason losses are hurting in a big way right now, no absence is bigger than Jayson Tatum. This team is left in a serious pickle because it can't possibly contend without Tatum, and the prospect of trying to play him at any point this season simply feels too risky.
We're in a season where the competition level in the Eastern Conference is not all that strong, leaving the door open for plenty of mid-tier teams to make a run at the playoffs or the play-in. But thus far this year, Boston simply hasn't looked talented enough to even fit into that tier of a scrappy underdog that could do damage given the right situation.
What we've seen from this iteration of the Celtics makes it absolutely inescapable that they're going to be something resembling a .500-level basketball team. It would seem that Boston's only hope of winning anything meaningful this season would be the scenario where Tatum somehow miraculously returns to the hardwood and plays some portion of the end of the season. However, this would complicate things in a big way.
We know that tearing an Achilles is one of if not the most devastating injuries a professional athlete can undergo in their careers. It's oftentimes been a total game-changer for high-level athletes, and not in a good way. There have been many cases of NBA players coming back from an Achilles not looking like anything close to the player they were before. However, the scenarios where we've seen exceptions to this rule are with the top-tier superstars.
The Celtics can't let Jayson Tatum play this season
Kevin Durant, for example, suffered an Achilles injury and came back in 2020 arguably better than before. The primary difference between Durant and Tatum is athleticism. KD has the kind of otherworldly shot-making ability where he didn't have to rely heavily on athletic ability (eg. running and jumping) heavily later on in his career. Tatum, on the other hand, is still young and needs his legs given that his game is much more predicated on athleticism.
So we don't know how this injury is going to ultimately affect Jayson and his ability to be the same level of star he was before. Odds are he'll turn out okay, but what you can't do in this situation is rush the return, especially given the circumstances.
If this were a season where the Celtics were already winning a lot of games and looked like they were one more star away from being championship favorites, then maybe you'd see how you could get Tatum back in the fold come March or April. But with Boston being firmly on the outside of contention looking in, there's zero sense in trying to have him play this season.
This puts the team in a weird spot, because Joe Mazzulla has never been the kind of guy to want to lose games on purpose. The Celtics aren't going to tank if he has anything to say about it. So they're likely going to continue putting in a hard effort every night, but still come up short a lot of the time due to the talent disparity.