BOSTON — It’s been 16 and a half months since Jayson Tatum went down with an Achilles rupture, since the emotional day he collapsed on the floor of Madison Square Garden and cried out in pain, wondering if he’d ever be able to play basketball at the highest level again.
These days, Tatum still thinks about his recovery in very linear terms, constantly crunching the numbers on how long it’s been since that fateful night.
“16 months,” Tatum proclaims at the Celtics’ practice on Thursday. “On October
12th, it’ll be 17 months.”
Tatum returned to the floor in March, 9 months after he suffered one of the worst injuries in basketball. From the jump, he impressed: he averaged 21.8 points and a career-high 10 rebounds per game over 16 regular-season games, though he wasn’t quite as explosive or efficient as he was pre-injury.
Sometimes, he hesitated to explode to the basket the way he did before the injury. Once in a while, he got in his own head about where he was at in his recovery. And the normally durable superstar was ruled out for the Celtics’ must-win Game 7 over the Philadelphia, after he suffered a leg injury days before the closeout.
“I was cleared,” Tatum said. “But, mentally, and from a conditioning standpoint, I wasn’t myself.”
But it’s been 7 months since that high-profile TD Garden return game, and Tatum feels vastly different.
“I feel great,” he said, “having this offseason to get stronger, get more explosive, or just work on my body in totality.”
He’s still glad he suited up last Spring — that helped his mindset as he entered the offseason — but he now feels like a much better version of himself.
“When I came back, it was great from a mentality standpoint, just to get over that hurdle of playing, and even if I was at 80% myself, knowing that I could still be effective going into the offseason, knowing that I had the whole summer to get my body right, get the rhythm of playing basketball again,” he said.
Though it’s now been almost a year and a half, Tatum continues to keep tabs on how long it’s been since May 12, 2025, the day he went down.
“Anybody that has been through rehab, they understand the phases, and that’s just how you track everything — you know at certain benchmarks, at two weeks, or four weeks, or four months, you just can do different things,” he said. “And it’s just kind of ingrained in my head ever since that day, and throughout this process.”
The external expectations are high: for the first time in Tatum’s 10-year career, he won’t be sharing the floor with Jaylen Brown, a perennial All-Star in his own right. Still, Joe Mazzulla said he doesn’t need anything different from Tatum this season than in years past.
“We need him to come in with a high level of effort, a high level of attention to detail and competitiveness on the defensive end — reading the game every possession, giving the game and the possession exactly what it needs all the time, and playing with a high level of confidence,” Mazzulla said. “He’s one of the best players in the league, and when he’s at his best, our team is at its best. Nothing changes in that. It’s been that way for a long time. It’s got to stay that way.”
At practice, Tatum continues to work with assistant coach Tony Dobbins, who helped spearhead his recovery. On Wednesday, he ran drills with Derrick White, who is now one of his longest-tenured teammates.
And he’s ready for things to get started.
“I feel so much more confident from a mental standpoint, and physically, than I did last March, and that’s just how it should be,” he said. “It’s a long journey from the injury I had.”
