Jayson Tatum’s injury changes the present and future of Boston Celtics
The scene was dramatic: Jayson Tatum, Boston Celtics star, lying on the parquet taking his right leg. Uncertainty, stupor, panic. As it happened Days ago with Stephen Curry at Golden State Warriorsonly now much worse: it was already confirmed that the Boston star injury is a breakage of the Achilles tendon.
Fans did not deserve it. The Celtics did not deserve it. And neither did the Knicks, who were winning with all of the law in a Madison Square Garden who were again a boiler, thanks in large part to Jalen Brunson, the clutch man of the NBA.
The series is not finished from sports, but from the emotional. Tatum’s injury is serious. And that opens a much deeper scenario on the Horizon of the Celtics, which will have a complex summer with determinations about the continuity of some important players, product of being in the Second-Apron of the salary limit, with Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday at the head. The champions, with new owners after the sale of the Grousbeck family business group to Bill Chisholm for 6.1 billion dollars, face serious financial decisions, now with the inconvenience of knowing that a Tatum gravity injury puts the team in a completely different position than it was.
Porzingis enters the last year of his contract, with a salary of 30 million dollars next season. Holiday, meanwhile, will be owned 104 million dollars during the next three campaigns, and with Derrick White and Payton Pritchard as players who can do their job, the directive could consider transferring it to balance the books.
It’s amazing as a little misfortune can change everything.
But, of course, there is still a series, and on Wednesday the faces will be seen again at the Garden TD. The Celtics will travel, as Dante, their own descent to hell: Tatum, so far, is the man who played the most parties in a team (706) since the 2017/2018 season.
Welcome, Joe Mazzulla, to the NBA of the Emergencies
Boston was the favorite of this key. He lost both games at home and when he won the third seemed that the patient’s temperature, the Celtics, went down to normal. Tatum’s injury, however, exploded the thermometer.
In the last 12 years, we had significant Achilles lesions in the history of the NBA. We still remember that of Kobe Bryant in 2013, historical moment in which he returned injured to throw the free throws that corresponded to him. Then, in 2017, Rudy Gay stands out, in 2018 that of Demarcus Cousins and in 2019 that of Kevin Durant.
Of all these cases, the best return was Durant’s. But a fact is a large alarm: he was injured at age 30 and returned only at 32. Can Celtics survive two years without tatum? In case something like that happens, in what conditions will it return?
The questions, for a team that seemed to have everything ordered and solid, are catastrophic.
A fact serves to recover, in part, the illusion: without tatum in the current season, the Celtics are 9-2. But there is something that does not deliver the numbers and that gives us the games: Boston is definitely badly playing, and in playoffs Tatum was the one who led the team at points, rebounds, assists and robberies.
His output due to injury, then, is an answer in itself: now their classmates will not have an emergency door when things do not come out.
What game plan can Mazzulla think? In principle, reallocate responsibilities. Tatum’s decline adds a porzingis that is rigid to the extreme. The Boston coach must do something that already did in the season: extend its rotation and try to fight some Knicks that are giants in character, but that lack depth. That is the firm that Tom Thibodeau always brought to the foot: defense, sacrifice and always play with a short template.
Everything indicated that the Celtics were in a position to repeat the championship. Or at least play the finals. Today they are at the worst moment of the last five years, and all in the blink of an eye. They had 14 points ahead on the fourth game score after winning the third. As happened in the first two games, they had gold in their hands, but they transformed into stone: they lost the game, they remained against the ropes in the series, and saw Tatum leave the stadium in a wheelchair.
Boston always played with triple as a trend. Who kills iron, dies. Thus he got things and thus let them escape. Without Tatum, the team brush, the fine stroke artist, the structure will require a complete transformation in 48 hours. A change of form, rely on defense, tighten the quadriceps and win the battle of the attitude.
There was a time that was one for everyone. That world no longer exists. It will be, from this fateful morning, all for everyone.
Celtics dream of a fantasy return. Impossible? Who knows: The playoffs, dear friends, were designed to surprise us.
