With the All-Star break in the rearview, we’re officially in the home stretch of the NBA season, two straight grueling months of basketball before the postseason begins. Much has already been established, as we have a good idea which teams are contenders, which are tanking, and which are fighting for everything in between.
But there’s still much to be settled, with all kinds of seeding still in play, awards up for grabs, and much more. Teams are still adjusting to life after the trade deadline, and now we’ll see more intentional lineups and playoff-type rotations starting to come together.
Given all the marquee matchups still left on the slate, and wanting to focus on some of the many positives in the league, Zach Lowe and Howard Beck decided to draft the best remaining games in the regular season. The only stipulation was that they couldn’t draft the same team twice in multiple matchups.
Beck had the first pick, and he bent the rules a little bit, not picking a specific game or date, but instead selecting Jayson Tatum’s return game for the Celtics. Zach yelled at Howard for cheating and not picking a real game, and both analysts admitted that this is still a matter of “if”, not when.
Still, it’s undeniable that there will be no more intriguing game on the schedule than a potential return of JT. Everyone wants to see what this superhuman athlete and basketball player is going to look like after rupturing his achilles and undergoing surgery in May.
Tatum will be center of NBA attention once he returns
All eyes will be on the four-time first-team All-NBA star, wanting to see how his body will look physically, how rusty his basketball skills will look, and how he’ll fit in with a Celtics roster that has undergone a dramatic transformation since the last time he played.
There’s still no guarantee that Tatum is going to play this season, but these aren’t the first pair of analysts to talk about it like a foregone conclusion. The ramp-up is clearly reaching a climax with JT scrimmaging 5-on-5 with other NBA players. Actions speak louder than words, and considering it’s still just mid-February, people are expecting this to happen.
Whether that’s actually true remains to be seen. This is a huge decision, and just because his body is ready for 5-on-5 doesn’t necessarily mean he’s fully ready to play in NBA games any time soon. There’s a checkered history of players returning less than a year after the surgery as well.
At such a young age, and with such a bright future ahead of him, if there’s any doubt whatsoever, it makes too much sense to wait and give JT the entire offseason and training camp to hit the ground running next season. Whether that happens or not, his rehab and return will continue to dominate the NBA news cycle, and rightfully so.