When Jayson Tatum's miraculous return to the Boston Celtics this season gets brought up, the first thing that comes up (besides, of course, the torn Achilles) is that it took almost 300 days for him to step on the hardwood floor again. Two months from being an entire year, give or take.
That sounds like a long time, but for the Celtics, here's the twist: it certainly didn't feel like it. Honestly, before he came back, it felt like Tatum tore his Achilles just yesterday, and that has nothing to do with Tatum. It has more to do with how impressive and how fun the Celtics were without him.
In case everyone forgot, this season had all the makings of a gap year for Boston. Typically, in situations like those, the 2025-26 season for the Celtics was supposed to go at an agonizing snail's pace until Tatum's return.
At first, the season seemed as fun as watching paint dry, with the team losing its first three games, but since then, it has actually been the most entertaining anyone could have imagined. We all looked forward to what Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and Payton Pritchard would look like in expanded roles, but the biggest twist was how collectively good the roster was.
The roster's evolution made the Tatum-less season highly enjoyable
Before the season began, it became an exhausting talking point when many would bring up that not only would Tatum be out for an extensive period, but his absence combined with the amount of firepower Boston lost - Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis, Al Horford, Luke Kornet- would certainly take them down a peg.
Well, thanks to pretty much everyone on their current roster stepping up - even ones that they later cast aside like Anfernee Simons and Josh Minott - Boston is on pace for 55 wins, only six fewer than last season. That hasn't been just luck. The Celtics have had both the right ingredients and Joe Mazzulla figuring out the right way to use them.
In a sense, this season has felt like the early Brad Stevens days, when the team made surprise contributions from the least likely players to form a team better than anyone could have anticipated, making the low expectations only further fuel a thrilling season. Because of that, it's like they say: time flies when you're having fun.
The only difference between then and now is, well, that this team just got a top-five player for the home stretch.
Jayson Tatum proved he only wants to keep the good times coming
Tatum's debut with the Celtics certainly showcased plenty of rust, but once he started shaking it off, he definitely looked like the old Tatum. That's not just in the sense of what he could do as a scorer, but also his instinct to make the right play.
There's already plenty to be excited about with Tatum's return going forward, and even if that comes with some growing pains, what Tatum showed more than anything is that he wants to fit in with the team to make it better.
Some were concerned that Tatum's reintegration would compromise what the Celtics had going for them beforehand, but anyone who's watched Tatum throughout his career knows he's never operated that way, and last night proved he's not changing.
Let there be no miscommunication here that the Celtics were quite fun to watch because of how they rose above despite no Tatum, and now that Tatum is back, they are only poised to get better from here!