This isn’t necessarily specific to the Celtics, but in sports media discourse nowadays, the goal posts are constantly being moved, and we are certainly seeing some of that with Jayson Tatum. The Boston superstar tore his achilles in May and was widely expected to miss the entire 2025-26 season.
By now, we know what has happened since then with Tatum rehabbing meticulously around the clock and working his way back in just under 10 months, returning to a Celtics team that had put itself in position to make a run at winning the East.
When he first came back, he received near-universal praise, looking pretty good on both ends of the floor, and mostly looking like Jayson Tatum. But it didn’t take long for fans and media to lose context and start criticizing JT after every rough play and missed shot.
So, let’s take a step back and remember where we are, where we’re headed, and what the goal has been all along. If anyone thought he would step right back onto the court and quickly return to 100% of his old self, they obviously didn’t fully understand the magnitude of the injury he suffered.
JT has passed every test with flying colors
Being able to come back at all this season was never a given, and the expectation all along, if there even was one, was that he could hopefully come back with about 20-25 games left in the regular season, ease his way in, slowly ramp up for playoff basketball, and be somewhere around 80% or better when the games matter most.
Now look at what Tatum has done and where things stand. He has checked every single one of those boxes and then some.Â
Every second of every game isn’t going to be perfect, and there have been some ups and downs. But considering he’s still just 11 games into his comeback, it’s hard to say things could be going much better.
The burst on drives is coming back, the rebounding has returned, the passing looks better than ever, and the defense and jumper are steadily improving as well. In his last three games, he’s averaging 25.7 points, 9.7 rebounds, and 6.7 assists, helping the Cs to a 3-0 record, and unbelievably earning the Eastern Conference’s Player of the Week honor.
Tatum still has time to ramp up for playoffs
Even better? The Celtics still have seven games left in the regular season. There’s a back-to-back in there, and they may want to hold him out of the regular season finale if the two seed is locked up, but even if we assume he gets five more games under his belt, that will take him to 16.
Hopefully, they’ll draw a relatively straightforward first-round playoff matchup, which means JT will get a week off for the play-in tournament, then a chance to play at least four more games at a playoff level, but likely against lesser competition.
That will get him to 20+ games under his belt, just in time for a second-round matchup that will probably be against the Knicks or Cavaliers. That’s exactly when the Celtics will need the best version of Tatum, and that has been the goal and the plan all along. Things are progressing beautifully, and all Celtics fans can do is enjoy it and hope that continues to be the case.