Tatum and Celtics looking to exorcise demons on Thursday night ahead of playoffs

With just three games remaining in the regular season, the Celtics all but have the two seed in the East locked up, needing only one more win or one Knicks loss. So, the stakes aren’t as high as they could be, but there’s still plenty on the line Thursday night when the Cs travel to Madison Square Garden to take on the Knicks.

We thought maybe we’d get a playoff-caliber showdown with both teams at full strength, but again, with everything mostly decided regardless of the outcome, the injury report is littered with questionable Celtics players, including Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and Neemias Queta.

However, one player who is notably absent from the injury report is Jayson Tatum, who appears to be a full go. For Tatum, this will, of course, be his first time in MSG since he suffered the demoralizing torn achilles in the final minutes of Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals last May.

JT now has a full month of games under his belt, and while he’s obviously not fully back up to speed, he’s closer than anyone could imagine, and his play, in addition to everything Boston already had going, has the team primed to make another run in the East playoffs.

Tatum with chance to clear MSG mental hurdle on Thursday

Barring some crazy results in the next few days, these teams appear to be on a collision course for round two of the playoffs, just like last season. For that reason, it’s hard to imagine that either team will want to give away too much on Thursday night with a seven-game series likely looming in just a few weeks.

But for Tatum, this is a chance for him to return to the scene of the crime and to get any PTSD or bad juju out of his head. It’s not like the arena is cursed, or there’s some mental block on Tatum. It’s just a basketball arena where he happened to get injured.

JT returning to MSG for first time since injury

Still, that was the most traumatizing moment of Tatum’s career, and possibly life. There’s something to be said for exorcising the demons, and the fact that he gets to go through that before a potential playoff series is great news for the Celtics.

And the fact that he’s the only starter who’s not listed on the injury report feels like a good indication that this isn’t meaningless to JT, and it’s a hurdle he wants to clear. It would be great to see him go off and lead a victory over the Knicks.

But more importantly, let’s just get all the storylines and fanfare out of the way. Hopefully, Tatum can get through a relatively uneventful game, which hopefully ends in a Celtics win. Either way, as long as we get this in the rearview, so that the team can go into a potential playoff series with the Knicks without this distraction, that will be a boon for everyone.