Turn This TV Off
Monday night, the Celtics' season came to a crashing halt. It's tempting to say that it was because of Jayson Tatum's injury, but the C's were about to lose that game regardless. The only reason it took so long for the Knicks to drop the hammer was because Tatum was so brilliant on both ends of the floor. Beyond the 42 points, eight rebounds, and four assists, Tatum also had four steals and two blocks. The rest of the team combined had four steals and zero blocks. At a couple of different points in the game, ESPN announcer Mike Breen exclaimed, "Jayson Tatum is everywhere!" Unfortunately, the inverse was true of his teammates.
It looked like Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles with three minutes left. The shot of him crying into his hands from a wheelchair (seriously, how far away are the locker rooms at Madison Square Garden from the court?) was devastating. Since he entered the league in the 2017-2018 season, he is one of two players to play 20,000 regular-season minutes (DeMar DeRozan is the other), and by far has played the most postseason minutes and combined minutes in the NBA over that span. Jayson Tatum is not just the Celtics' constant, he's the NBA's constant. To wit:
(Please keep in mind with this table that it's not necessarily definitive, but I did include everyone who has played at least 18,000 regular-season minutes, and 2,400 playoff minutes, so it's probably definitive. Certainly, Tatum and Jokić are definitive at one and two).
The 1,553 minute gap between Tatum and Jokić is roughly the same as the gap between Jokić and DeMar DeRozan in fifth place (1,596). Obviously, Jokić is still playing this postseason and will cut into that, but the point stands. We don't think about minutes played as much because games played is the shinier, easier-to-understand statistic, but since entering the league, Tatum has been the NBA's iron man.
The only hope I can conjure on the injury front is what happened to Giannis Antetokounmpo in the 2021 playoffs. He endured what looked like a season-ending knee injury, only to come back after missing just two games. The NBA.com story after his return in Game 1 of the NBA Finals had this quote:
He repeatedly insisted that his medical situation wasn’t a problem, even though he admits his initial reaction to the injury was 'I’m going to be out for a year' and that his knee swelled up to twice its normal size.
Giannis was famously just fine in that series. Maybe Tatum will be too, but I really don't think so.
Perhaps Jrue Holiday can summon how he felt in Games 5 and 6 of that 2021 Eastern Conference Finals, when he dropped 25-13-6 and 27-9-9 in Giannis' absence, but honestly that would be even more surprising than Tatum playing on Wednesday. Holiday has looked like a corpse these last three games. After taking 14 shots in Game 1, and generally playing great defense, he has taken just 15 shots in the past three games, and generally played awful defense, none worse than last night. Jalen Brunson worked him like a speed bag – Derrick White too. At this point, the only person (besides Tatum, who did guard Brunson pretty well last night) even putting up mild resistance against Brunson is Payton Pritchard, and Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla either left him on the bench in the second half or had Pritchard matched up elsewhere.
White was great in the first half, but he disappeared after halftime. Which is more than I can say for Al Horford and Kristaps Porzingis, who combined took just seven shots. Porzingis looked like he couldn't dribble at all. To his credit, he at least didn't try to do what he couldn't do, and was quick to get rid of the ball.
Jaylen Brown, on the other hand, did no such thing. He had no lift, and on multiple occasions turned wide-open dunks into lay-ups, some that he missed. Worse, his hands were once again coated in butter, and it was his final, costly turnover that potentially cost Tatum a season or more of basketball. Brown was once again susceptible to forcing the action instead of trying to work the ball around and open up the offense. Worst of all, he committed several stupid fouls. By this point in the season, he should have known what Brunson's gameplan was for defending him. Instead, he once again tried to go through his chest and picked up a stupid offensive foul early in the game. His fifth foul was even worse, as he just bear hugged OG Anunoby after committing a turnover. The only reason it didn't become a costly clear-path foul was because Anunoby hadn't actually touched the ball yet.
Head coach Joe Mazzulla was horrible again as well. With Sam Hauser still out, Mazzulla refused to work a ninth guy into the mix, leaving Tatum and Brown as the only two wing players available. In both this season and last, nine Celtics averaged/have averaged at least 10 minutes per game in the playoffs. To just shorten that to eight players, especially when you didn't have an extra day of rest like you did before Game 3, is math that doesn't math. Al Horford is 38 years old and played 38 minutes in this game (37:30 if you want to be technical). It was his most this playoffs, and an inexplicably dumb decision by Mazzulla. It would have been inexplicably dumb even if Horford was playing well, which he wasn't. The team needed at least four or five minutes from Baylor Scheierman or Torrey Craig – especially in the third quarter when the Knicks were making a run and the C's desperately needed a spark. Now, they may be faced with a situation where Scheierman is a starter next season, and he picked up exactly zero playoff experience in his rookie season. Hopefully, he'll play significant minutes in Game 5, at least, though at this point I'm not holding my breath.
I don't want to get into the machinations of where the C's go in the offseason. Let's get an official diagnosis on Tatum first. Let's let the season officially end first. As one of my best friends likes to say, chip windows are incredibly short, and the C's get at least one more game as the defending champions. Here's hoping they play like it on Wednesday.