As the NBA fandom and community waited anxiously Tuesday morning for new information on the frightening injury to Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum, which he suffered on Monday night in the second round playoff Game Four against the New York Knicks, the first detail finally dropped shortly after 2 pm Eastern Time on Tuesday.
A local Boston TV station, WCVB-TV, reported at about 1:30 pm that the 27-year-old Tatum “suffered an injury involving his Achilles tendon.” The station said that its information came from “an NBA source.”
According to ESPN NBA insider Shams Charania, Tatum underwent an MRI at a New York hospital earlier Tuesday. The results were not yet made public. But Charania gave a pessimistic outlook on Tatum’s, and Boston’s, prognosis.
“The Boston Celtics are bracing for the worst around Jayson Tatum and that right foot,” Charania said, interviewed on ESPN SportsCenter. “The Celtics since last night have been expecting a severe injury for Tatum”
The WCVB report quoted Dr. Rock Positano, director of the Joe DiMaggio Foot and Ankle Center at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, as saying that if indeed Tatum ruptured his Achilles tendon, the injury would be highly painful and recovery time could take four to six months.
With 3:04 remaining in the game and the Celtics trailing underdog New York by seven points, Tatum lunged for a loose ball and collapsed, clutching the back of his right ankle. In obvious pain, Tatum signaled for a time-out, calling the last available time-out for the Celtics.
After the game, won by the Knicks who took a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series, Tatum’s longtime teammate and fellow Celtics superstar Jaylen Brown appeared to be at a loss for words, stunned by the apparent severity of Tatum’s injury.
“I think everybody’s concerned with Jayson. I’m not sure how bad it is,” Brown said, as quoted by CBS Sports. “Didn’t look great. But I think everybody is kind of more concerned with that.”
Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla described what happened to Tatum as a “lower-body injury.”
“I talked to the medical staff, they told me it’s a lower body injury and he’ll get an MRI [Tuesday],” Mazzulla said in a postgame meeting with the press. “We’ll see where it goes from there.”
Mazzulla also added that “the fact that he had to be carried off â he’s the type of guy, he gets right up. He didn’t. It’s tough to watch a guy like him get carried off like that.”
Positano, in the WCVB report, said that the Achilles injury also carries a psychological aspect that can affect a player’s performance even after the recovery period.
“People don’t realize that, unlike other foot and ankle injuries, when people get an Achilles injury, there’s a very large psychological component,” the foot and ankle specialist told the Boston station. “They always have that fear that when they make a turn or twist or they jump, they’re going to re-injure it.”
Another doctor, Evan Jefferies â a doctor of physical therapy â said on a Monday night podcast that typical recovery time for a torn Achilles tendon would be between nine and 12 months.
If the reports are correct and Tatum has torn his Achilles, an absolute best-case scenario would likely see him out until at least the 2026 All-Star break.
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