Paul Pierce speaks for Celtics fans at Jayson Tatum -Increasing: “I just feel bad”

Paul Pierce played 15 seasons for the Boston Celtics and won an NBA championship with them in 2008. He gave the team everything and wears this passion with him, while he supports the Celtics with all my heart 12 years after his last season for Boston.

He showed this die -hard fandom when he was so certain that the Celtics game 2 of their semi -final series of the Eastern Conference would win against the New York Knicks that he said he would go to work if they lost. He showed it again on Tuesday and in his response to the news that superstar Jayson Tatum had broken his Achilles during the 4 game and was now overlooked the entire next season.

“It felt like the air came out of my house,” said Pierce on Tuesday in “Speaking”.

“It looked like the air had come out of the (Madison Square Garden). The reaction on his face looked like a player who knew that he was seriously injured.”

With 2:58 in the game on Monday evening, Tatum fell in a heap after he was immersed after a loose ball, which ultimately led to an OG -Anunoby transition. When the ESPN show said it was below, the camera still showed the kinks on the offensive. There was no visible collision or indication of what the injury was for the camera to go back to Tatum and grabbed the back of his right leg and bumped in pain when the Celtics training staff took care of him.

Fear increased when the repetition showed that it was a non -contact injury. Then Tatum was accompanied in the changing room and could not be able to weight his right leg, and later it was shown how he had buried his head in a wheelchair in his hands.

“When I saw how he went out without pressure on it, and then we saw the wheelchair, I knew it was bad,” said Pierce. “I just feel bad for Jayson and the Boston Celtics.”

Tatum also had his best game of the 2025 playoffs, an individual effort that would have lived in Celtics transfer regardless of the result. He scored 42 points on a loud Madison Square audience at the 16-von-28 shooting and knocked down seven 3-point shots. Now the performance cannot be mentioned without increasing the injury.

“He put together a game that we would talk about for a long time,” said Pierce. “He was on the way to 50 points and wore the Celtics.”

He was Boston's only consistent form of the offensive in a game in which it blew another double -digit tour in the second half. New York had done an 11-2 run to put the game on hold shortly before Tatum. Although the Knicks did not achieve the 121-113 victory because Tatum went down, his absence will certainly make the rest of this series much easier to close.

“For the Boston Celtics, who are still playing in the playoffs – continue to fight,” said Pierce. “It's not over yet.”

The best-of-Seven series is 3-1 with game 5 for Wednesday evening in Boston, but the auxiliary pieces of the Celtics have to struggle in this series, and they would need huge turnarounds from everyone to achieve a comeback and beat the kinks. Jaylen Brown, the 2024 Finale MVP, scores an average of 20.5 points with only 37.7% shooting from the field and is 7 out of 31 with 3-point shots. Kristapaps Porzingis only has 5.0 ppg in 17.5 minutes when he fights against an illness.

[Related: Could Jayson Tatum’s injury end this iteration of the Celtics?]

“I just feel bad for Jayson and the Boston Celtics because they hate losing their star and, above all, hates losing him with an injury as it came out today,” said Pierce. “So my heart goes to his family, the organization. They hate to see it for a young star.”

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