Once Jayson Tatum's return to the Boston Celtics was on the horizon, there was plenty of excitement, but it came with some skepticism, primarily around whether the Celtics could re-integrate Tatum into their rotation this late in the season after how well they played without him.
Was that narrative stupid? Of course it was because not only is Tatum still an excellent player, but he's proven how malleable he is as a rotation player, regardless of his talent, which should be considered one of his specialties. However, that narrative may not have been about Tatum, but rather about the Celtics' pretty bad history of failing to reintegrate stars after prolonged absences.
Tatum's impressive play from the start proved that any concerns about him and how he would fit with the team were stupid, but the Celtics have not had the same luck with some previous stars who came back under similar circumstances. In fact, not only did it not work out beforehand, but it also turned out to be a disaster.
Previous Celtics stars struggled to mesh with the team upon returning from injury
Let's take it back to 2018 when this sad trend started. The Celtics didn't have just one star to put back into the rotation, but two: Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward. It seemed like a slam dunk because the team had just come off a playoff run where they were one game from the NBA Finals and were getting their two best players back.
Well, there's a reason why talking about how talented a team is typically gets followed with, "on paper." The irony is that Irving and Hayward failed to re-integrate successfully for different reasons. Irving looked as good as ever in Year 2 with Boston, but it was clear that his playing style (and "leadership") was getting in the way of the team's overall success.
Hayward truly struggled both physically and mentally, as his extremely rare injury proved to be more traumatic that most gave him credit for. He looked much better in his second year post-injury, but it was clear that his mental recovery was going to take two years, not one.
This didn't start and stop with them. Remember when Kemba Walker missed a good chunk of the 2020-21 season because of his ailing knee? Celtics fans would like to forget his second season because, while he showed flashes of Cardiac Kemba at times, it was clear his All-Star days were over, and his presence didn't improve Boston at all when he came back.
Walker wasn't the last one. Kristaps Porzingis was supposed to be the last piece of the repeat puzzle for Boston last year, and while his traditional stats looked about as solid as his first season, anyone who watched could tell something was off about his fit.
To illustrate, Porzingis' net rating with the other Celtics starters (Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, Jrue Holiday) was exactly zero, per NBA.com. Compare that to Al Horford's net rating with that quarter, a plus-17.7, and it was clear Porzingis was nowhere near the trump card he was in his first season as a Celtic.
This only further proves how much of an anomaly Tatum truly is
It's easy to forget because Tatum made it look so easy is that it's much easier said than done to re-integrate star players during the regular season. The team has continuity among its players that it's hard to figure out how to insert a star back in.
The fact that Tatum did it so seamlessly speaks more to how rare of a player he is than anything else. It's very possible that it may have been awkward at first (to be fair, he definitely looked like someone who would need a minute in his first game back) only for him to gradually figure himself out.
But nope, he basically looked like he never left. While he definitely still needs more time to get comfortable on the court, Boston has looked so good with him that it's almost easy to forget he missed most of the season.
The narrative that getting him up to speed so quickly would be hard only looks dumb because it's Jayson Tatum we're talking about, but that doesn't mean that narrative as a whole is dumb, and Boston's history is solid proof of it.