Jayson Tatum's Achilles injury is a devastating blow for the future of Celtics and a star in his heyday

In the middle of the fourth quarter in game 4 of a semi-final series in the Eastern Conference Boston Celtics striker Jayson Tatum to the left, split the defense and had to connect a layup, with Larry Bird and John Havlicek for most 40-point playoff games in the franchise story. The bloom of his career had just started.

This was the next Celtics legend that his heir script in real time for the defending champions of the NBA.

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It is difficult to write this last part in the past of the past, but now necessary because only a few minutes later Tatum broke his right Achilles tendon, while he was chasing a loose ball late in a defeat of 121-113 against the New York Knicks. The Celtics now appear 3-1 in the best-of-Seven set, but the result on the square is secondary.

As teammate Al Horford reporters said: “The loss is the loss. It is even more important that Jayson, about whom I worry about. And only to make sure that I am there. This is my priority. … It is very worrying, only from, you know the care that I have for him. What it means to Boston.”

The Celtics announced the results of Tatum's MRI on Tuesday. We have no idea what will become of Tatum's Prime or these Celtics, but the answers to both are now even darker than if they have just had a series.

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For Tatum, this is a one -year recovery, which will probably cost him alongside the rest of these playoffs the entire next season. He was able to return for the 2026-27 campaign. In what property nobody knows.

We believe that on the basis of the restoration of Kevin Durant, we know, whose slim frame and highly qualified scoring repertoire are tight facsimiles for Tatum. Durant tore his right Achilles tendon at the age of 30 in the 2019 NBA final, missed the entire next season and returned to play 35 games of the 2020-21 season when he was again a superstar for another serious contender in the playoffs. His offensive production has not stalled.

Whether Durant has ever been 100% of his former himself again is a question of the debate. The injury gave us the feeling of being closer to the end of his career than at the beginning, and this feeling was probably right.

Tatum is 27 years old, about the time when most basketball players are at the peak of their strength. After he had never missed more than 10 games in one season, he will probably miss his entire next campaign and probably can probably no longer take part in the playoffs until he is 29 years old. Thirty are suddenly around the corner, and we cannot predict how someone gets older in their career, especially someone on a surgically repaired Achilles.

It rarely happens that one of the greats from the game on the abyss of its absolute prime is taken. And don't make a mistake: Tatum is one of the sizes. The future Hall of Fam will make a fourth all-NBA team in a row through a span, in which he achieved an average 28-8-5 on 46/36/84, which only matches all-timers. He has achieved more playoff points than anyone else. He did things that we had never seen before, and still had a lot of runway left to strengthen this heritage.

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It is now shorter and the heights he can achieve are also lower. How much we don't know.

We also don't know what the Celtics will look like when Tatum returns to them. They have been in the league since entering the league and reached the conference final in its rookie season. He did the NBA final in 2022 and won everything in 2024. He was in five of his last seven seasons in the final of the conference, and the Celtics had a decent shot to take a run with a sixth when he stayed healthy.

This option now seems to be beyond the remote control, since the Celtics are exposed to 3: 1 deficit. At the end of the season, a discussion about the reduction in the salary statement was already held. As currently constituted, the roster could cost half a billion dollars next season, including luxury taxes. The only chance that Boston's new owner group paid so much salary was a repetition championship and the chance to pursue a three-goal. This hope is almost gone now.

Let us be clear: the Boston Celtics are not championship candidates without Jayson Tatum.

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This probably means the end of a Boston office for Jrue Holiday or Kristaps Porziņģis – or both. Al Horford will be 40 years old when Tatum returns to the line -up. And what will become of Jaylen Brown, whose career was associated with Tatum as co-stars of this recent entry in the Celtics tradition? He will have his shot to lead the team now, at least for one season, but the chance of stacking titles is on ice … if not away.

The Celtics manager Brad Stevens builds up his team in Tatum's absence, but the squad Tatum returns when it is now. He will then have a heavier burden. This is the next chapter in Boston, for good or bad. And it couldn't look much worse at the moment.