Each week during the 2025-26 NBA season, we will take a deeper dive into some of the league’s biggest storylines in an attempt to determine whether trends are based more in fact or fiction moving forward.
Last week: The NBA’s MVP award is up for grabs
Fact or Fiction: Expect Jayson Tatum to be Jayson Tatum again this season
Lost in 10 months of recovery was just how well Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum was playing at the moment he ruptured his right Achilles tendon. He was working on 42 points, 8 rebounds, 4 assists, 4 steals and 2 blocks, and he had a few more minutes remaining to try to even Boston’s series against the New York Knicks.
He had already established himself as one of the best players alive, making a fourth straight appearance on the All-NBA First Team, and — with most of his competition eliminated from the first round of the playoffs — he was operating closer to the third-best player in the world, falling short of only Nikola Jokić and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
That’s right: Jayson Tatum was, pretty clearly, the best American-born player alive. He was in the middle of telling us a tale about the best Celtics player since one Larry Bird.
Then, everything changed. Chasing a loose ball, Tatum planted his right foot, and his Achilles tendon failed him, snapping in two with minutes remaining in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference semifinals. He has said since in that moment, as he writhed in pain on the Madison Square Garden court, he wondered if he would ever play again.
Hours would not pass before his intentions changed.
Because it was a playoff game, all of the chief decision-makers in Tatum’s life were present, including his mother. That also included Boston’s team doctor, who has performed countless Achilles surgeries. But this was not your grandfather’s pickleball injury; this was Jayson Tatum, America’s best basketball player, and they were in New York, where a world-renowned Achilles surgeon, Dr. Martin O’Malley, practiced.
The theory went: If they could perform the surgery quick enough, before any swelling made a procedure more difficult, the recovery process could be expedited. This was only theory because they had never performed an Achilles surgery so quickly, let alone on an athlete of Tatum’s caliber. So, together, they tested the theory, and here we are.
This was unprecedented. This is unprecedented.
Sure, other superstars have come back from Achilles surgeries. Kevin Durant has performed somewhere close to the level he was before his injury, though he has not returned to a conference finals since. Then again, Durant was on the other side of 30 years old when he tore his tendon, and we should have expected some regression.
Tatum turned 28 on March 3. He was 27 when the injury occurred, an age when a superstar’s athletic powers have historically peaked. He was 26 when he won his first championship, and he was defending that title when his right Achilles failed him.
The superstar’s absence was so significant the Celtics gave up all hope of championship contention, shedding the salaries of Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porziņģis, Al Horford and Luke Kornet as part of a season-long attempt to duck the luxury tax.
The Celtics were supposed to take a step back, perhaps even moving into the draft lottery, which could have made Tatum’s decision to sit out an entire season easy for him.
Then, a funny thing happened. Jaylen Brown, along with Derrick White and Payton Pritchard, the remaining core of a title team, held onto the rope. They, along with unheralded center Neemias Queta and a cast of characters on the wing, including Hugo Gonzalez, Baylor Scheierman and Jordan Walsh, kept the Celtics in contention.
Meanwhile, all those same decision-makers in Tatum’s life, including his doctors, representatives for the team and, most importantly, himself, have agreed that he is 100% ready to rejoin his team, just as it is settling into second place in the East.
Yup, all signs point to Tatum making his return Friday against the Dallas Mavericks. Whether we should expect him to be 100% Jayson Tatum is a different matter.
Durant scored 22 points across 25 minutes of a blowout victory in his return from Achilles surgery, though he took more than 18 months to make his debut. Kobe Bryant returned in just eight months, scoring nine points in 28 minutes, only to suffer another injury to the same leg six games later, and he was never the same again. Our own Tom Haberstroh discussed that dichotomy and Tatum’s place within it at great length.
Point is: What Tatum is doing — a superstar at his athletic peak, coming back from an Achilles surgery, rejoining a team that managed to stay in the hunt without him — has never been seen before, and we would be silly to try to write his story’s script for him.
We can speculate all we want about what his return could and should look like. He has done some of that, too, telling O’Malley, “I ain’t come back to be no role player, Doc.”
But he might have to fill a role, complementing Brown in ways Brown once complemented him, and doing so in minutes vacated by Gonzalez, Scheierman and Walsh, all without disrupting the chemistry this roster built in his absence, in order for this version of the Celtics to be at its best. And who is to say he won’t do just that?
Tatum’s instinct may be to take the helm, and if someone who has not played in 10 months wants to grab hold of a playoff race, that could be bad for all parties involved. But to speculate is just that, speculation, and nobody knows for sure what to expect.
At the same rate: Tatum is a winning player and has been since he joined the NBA, and we should probably afford him the time to figure out how best to help this team win. That is what this is all about, 20 games to regain his confidence, to work his way back, to help these Celtics be better than they are. That is the real test of Tatum’s return.
We can wait until next year to decide whether Tatum can ever be the best player on a title team again. For now, let us let him figure this unprecedented return out on his own terms. This is his call, after all, and only he will write the next chapter in his story. He could be a superstar or a role player. He is likely just thankful to be playing again.
For the rest of us, in whatever form he takes, America’s best player, once, is back.
Determination: Fiction. Do not expect Jayson Tatum to be that Jayson Tatum again, the driving force of a contender, not this season; expect him to be a useful player, someone who helps these Celtics perform better than they might have without him, and there is heroism in that. All other expectations are just an added burden to carry.