Down and temporarily out.
Boston Celtics superstar Jayson Tatum has undergone successful surgery to repair a ruptured right Achilles tendon, the Celtics announced Tuesday. The Celtics expect Tatum to make a full recovery, however, provided no timeline for his return to the court.
The 27-year-old will miss the rest of Boston’s playoff run against the New York Knicks, which could be over as early as Wednesday and potentially the entire 2025-26 season. There is a small glimmer of hope he could return late next season if he makes a speedy recovery, but the Celtics will be without their superstar player for the foreseeable future.
It is a heart wrenching blow to the defending NBA champions both in the present and the near future. Tatum will be back for the Celtics eventually, but the team will likely look a lot different than the one he attempted to lead to a win on the road Monday night at Madison Square Garden.
Tatum was injured with just under three minutes to go in Boston’s Game 4 loss to the Knicks at the worlds’ most famous arena. He went after a loose ball at the top of the key but instead fell to the floor in agony while grabbing his right ankle. He had to be assisted off the floor and was taken through the arena in a wheelchair.
Tatum was once again leading the Celtics in every category this postseason. He had 42 points, eight rebounds, four assists, and four steals against the Knicks before exiting the game Monday night. The 121-113 loss dropped the Celtics into a 3-1 series hole against the Knicks in their Eastern Conference semifinal series.
Overcoming that huge deficit without their best player Tatum is going to be hard task to pull off, especially with Jaylen Brown and Kristaps Porzingis still not at 100% with a knee injury and illness, respectively. Game 5 is Wednesday night at TD Garden in Boston.
Moments after the Tatum news broke, WBZ-TV’s Brandon Truitt spoke with Dr. Gregory Waryasz, a respected orthopedic surgeon and the Director of Foot & Ankle Sports Medicine at Mass General Brigham. Dr. Waryasz had not seen Tatum’s MRI, but said the Celtics star is likely in for a 9-12-month recovery.
Embed from Getty Images“The Achilles is the main tendon in the lower leg below the knee. It connects the calf muscles to the heel bone and allows you to push off,” he explained. “Initial recovery [of a rupture] is a couple of weeks of non-weight-bearing, followed by prolonged time in a boot – usually three months. Then you start working on functional recovery and then start to return to sports activities after five months.
“Usually for someone in Tatum’s situation, it’s a 9-12-month injury,” said Dr. Waryasz.
Tatum rarely misses games for the Celtics, a true ironman and workhorse in today’s “load management” era in the NBA. The longest stretch he has missed in his career was five games, and that was due to COVID in the 2021 season. Since Tatum entered the NBA in 2017 out of Duke, no player in the league has played more minutes than the Celtics star.
He did miss his first-ever playoff game a few weeks ago when he sat out Boston’s Game 2 win over the Orlando Magic with a wrist injury, but it only sidelined him for that one game. Overall, Tatum missed 11 games during the regular and postseason this year, and Boston went 9-2 in those contests.
But it is worth stating that six of those wins were against teams that were not interested in winning games in Portland, Utah, Brooklyn, Phoenix, Washington and Charlotte. They were tanking for the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes.
Losing Tatum is a massive blow to Celtics’ chances for back-to-back titles this postseason and not having him next available next year could bring about some major changes to the Celtics in the offseason.
