Jayson Tatum injury has ended this Celtics era

From Michael PinaMay 13, 1:34 p.m. UTC • 6 min

NBA championships are painfully difficult to grasp. The only thing that is more difficult than winning is to defend it the following year, with higher expectations, countless obstacles, a desperate need for good luck and the sword of the Damocles that dangles over the head. The Boston Celtics played on Monday evening.

With a little more than three minutes in a dramatic back and forth game 4, which was dominated by two masterful, highly efficient superstar appearances by Jalen Brunson (39 points, 12 assists) and Jayson Tatum (42 points, eight rebounds, four strips), the rest of this series and beyond this.

Tatum came after a break and dived after a loose ball behind the 3-point line and then immediately reached for his lower leg. His reaction to the pain was immediately and visceral; He was able not to bring the non -contact injury into weight when a few members of the medical team in Boston put him back in the changing room of the visitors for a slow walk. “It is difficult to observe how a guy is carried away,” said Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla.

The basketball game had already tilted in New York's direction before Tatum, supported by an almost perfect third quarter of Brunson and some timely shots by Mikal Bridges and OG Anunoby. When he ultimately won the game, the Knicks took over a 3-1 series with a 3-1 series and they have the opportunity to achieve the Eastern Conference final on Wednesday evening with a win in the TD Garden. Tatum's status for this game is seriously in question; An MRI is planned for Tuesday morning, and the potential for an extended – IIe, years of – distance is on the horizon.

“I think everyone takes care of Jayson. I'm not sure how bad it is. It didn't look great,” said Celtic's striker Jaylen Brown. “But I think everyone is more busy. Obviously, the loss is huge. But we have to prepare for game 5. So we will take the night, stroke our heads tomorrow and put together a game plan to get out on our home floor and keep this series alive.”

Until the test results of Tatum, this is as bleak as for an NBA organization das exact opposite of the Celtics, which last June and then this season a league best-18. Have celebrated the championship and brought everyone back for a run at No. 19. It is traumatic to lose a multi-year all-NBA franchise player from the first team. Lose it in the middle of the playoffs when the aging Celtics were meticulously constructed to win everything at the momentis an existential crisis.

It was also the toughest memory of how fragile any attempt to maintain success in the NBA can. Boston now has to concentrate on the last game of his season against the ultra-physical, balanced and long-lasting kinks, who took a whopping 38.1 percent of their own missed shots in game 4 and repeatedly have the Celtics from their actions and from their positions in the second second.

“It's not like we wanted to be in this position,” said Celtics Guard Derrick White. “But we are where we are and we have to find a way to win game 5.”

And it is likely that you have to persevere without your leader, whose body may have finally collapsed. In the last eight seasons, the Celtics enjoyed the luxury of relying on a star that is hardly ever injured and only missed his first playoff game after game 2 from this year First round. Since he moved in in 2017, no player has played in the history of the NBA in the first eight years in the first eight years of NBA.

Tatum's production, two-way effects and unshakable reliability were the foundation of everything that Celtics achieved during this period. It was shown in Mazzulla's rotation in game 4, whereby Tatum was playing for the first time in the game in the second quarter. (Mazzulla pulled out the opening of the opening a few times this season: a victory on March 8 against the Los Angeles Lakers, in which he fell out 40 minutes on December 27 and a blowout victory against the Indiana Pacers.)

The nightmare, which finally unfolds this time, can become a moment before and after the moment. The consequences of Tatum's severe fear when he actually broke an Achilles tendon (an absolutely worst scenario that was feared openly in various conversations in the intestine of the Madison Square Garden-the short and long-term long-term long-term trajectory dramatically. 8-2 record in the Eastern Conference Playoff series.

But before they competed against Brunson's Knicks, the Celtics already stared down a financial crunch, which would almost definitely distribute talented pieces from next year. It makes no sense to pay for a team that Tatum is not healthy enough to play, to pay an unprecedented luxury tax bill, let alone a duty roster that could not slow New York in a practically a must-win game. “Tonight it was defensive to be honest tonight. No resistance,” said Brown. “The crime was great, the crime was okay. No resistance to defense.”

The Knicks scored 4 148.9 points per 100 possessions in the second half, with Brunson's 67.7 percent shooting percentage and 39.1 usage rate. Tatum's own absurd shot helped Boston to stay in the game, but his injury had nothing to do with the fact that New York was passed on the track. “We went to a few different reports. I think it was the rebound and the transition that brought us. Obviously, Brunson has a great player. Anunoby and Bridges separated it with their goal, and they hit us on the boards, '' '' 'Mazzulla, said Mazzulla.

The tactical back and forth, which revealed itself as game 4, is not irrelevant for the Knicks. They defeated the defending champions in four games a third time after they had hopelessly exceeded in four regular seasonal matchups and were withdrawn from another double-digit deficit of the second half when the act of isolation finally falls.

But for the Celtics, a team that could not find out the little things when it was most important, the big picture is now overwhelming. Whenever it loses its next game, Boston is confronted with a level of abroad. Pretty much everything is on the table – no trade that does not continue from Tatum should shock people, be it Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis or even Brown – when the new owner finally takes control of a team in turbulence that turns from one era to the next.

The most promising parallel was in 2019 with the Golden State Warriors after Kevin Durant had lost in the NBA final and had gone in the free agency. Golden State stayed dead and missed the playoffs in 2020 and 2021 before winning a remarkable fourth championship in 2022. But Tatum is not Steph Curry, and Curry didn't have to recover from a broken Achilles before led his team remarkably to another title.

However, this is a different story for another day. There is too much that is currently unknown in a season that is not even technically over. When asked what the night as a whole means for the only franchise for which he has ever played, Brown has returned. “I'm not sure,” he took a break. “I have no words at the moment.”

Michael Pina

Michael Pina is a manager of the wrestler who covers the NBA.