At 7:09 p.m. on Friday, TD Garden public address announcer Eddie Palladino shouted the words Celtics fans had waited nearly 10 months to hear:
“Aaannd from Duke, No. 0, Jayyyson Taaaatum!”
Two hundred ninety-eight days removed from Achilles surgery, the Celtics’ All-NBA superstar was officially back. And though he didn’t immediately morph back into Peak Tatum, he turned in an encouraging all-around performance in his season debut.
Tatum started against the Dallas Mavericks and tallied 15 points on 6-of-16 shooting, 12 rebounds and seven assists in 27 minutes as Boston cruised to a 120-100 victory.
“This was a huge step,” Tatum said. “I’ve still got a long way to go, but this was a really big step for me.”
Jaylen Brown and Derrick White — the primary drivers of the Celtics’ offense in Tatum’s absence — scored 24 and 20 points, respectively, with Brown adding seven rebounds and seven assists and White notching two steals and two blocks. Payton Pritchard had 18-7-6 on 8-of-17 shooting off the bench, and Neemias Queta stacked up 16 points and 15 rebounds.
Now 42-21 and sitting second in the Eastern Conference, the Celtics will work to reintegrate Tatum into their winning formula over their final 19 regular-season games. They’ll visit the Cleveland Cavaliers on Sunday (1 p.m.) to kick off a challenging three-game road trip that also takes them to San Antonio and Oklahoma City.
They’ll need to go through that process without their top external midseason addition, however, as veteran center Nikola Vucevic exited Friday’s win with a fractured ring finger. Vucevic needs surgery and is expected to miss the next month, according to a report from ESPN’s Shams Charania.
“I can’t commend the group enough and the coaching staff on how they’ve attacked the season, how they competed and just played together every single night,” Tatum said. “I don’t know if there’s a team that’s been more fun to watch this season, just play as a unit.”
Tatum’s comeback was a playoff-level event in and around TD Garden.
Every fan received a white T-shirt with the Celtics logo on the front and Tatum’s name and number on the back. The shirts were sponsored by Amica Insurance, whose new “Back to Zero” advertising campaign is geared around Tatum’s comeback.
The Celtics Pro Shop sold what manufacturer New Era described as “one-time, extremely limited” caps commemorating the occasion. Their slogan: “Welc0me Back,” with Tatum’s jersey number replacing the “o” and a shamrock in place of the “a.”
The team’s social media feeds pumped out more than a dozen Tatum graphics and hype videos during the lead-up to tipoff. Once the arena doors opened, hundreds of fans packed the lower bowl more than an hour before game time to watch Tatum warm up.
With the added draw of Mavericks rookie and Maine native Cooper Flagg (16 points, eight rebounds, six assists) returning to his native New England for the first time as an NBA player, the game also attracted by far the largest media contingent of the season. A Celtics staffer said the team issued roughly 250 credentials, on par with an NBA Finals game.
That level of anticipation — highly unusual for a March 6 matchup featuring one team that is well outside playoff contention — seemed to throw off both teams’ shooters in the early going. While the Garden crowd roared, the Celtics missed seven of their first eight shots, converting just one field goal in the first three-plus minutes.
Tatum notched an assist on that lone make (a Queta alley-oop on Boston’s fourth possession) and another to Brown on the Celtics’ first 3-pointer. As he readjusted to game speed, Tatum made an immediate impact with his passing, accounting for five of his team’s 15 first-half assists. He also pulled down five rebounds before halftime.
The shooting took longer to return. Tatum misfired on his first six field-goal attempts, including a driving dunk that looked poised to blow the roof off of the already revved-up Garden. Tatum blew past a Mavericks defender, cocked his right arm back and clanged the ball off the front of the rim.
It wasn’t until late in the first half that Tatum finally settled in. In one 22-second stretch, he slammed home a go-ahead putback dunk off a missed Payton Pritchard 3-pointer, then buried a stepback corner three. An and-one dunk by White moments later sent Boston into halftime with a 58-53 lead.
Tatum said the dunk “helped (him) relax a lot.”
“When you take an extended period of time off, you get anxious,” he said. “You want it really bad. And obviously, I wanted to hit every shot I took, but I really was just grateful. I had a real sense of gratitude of just being back on the floor and playing basketball again.”
Tatum wasn’t done. He scored the Celtics’ first points of the second half with a bank-shot 9-footer, nailed a midrange fadeaway and hit another three from the corner, this one coming while the basket was still swaying from a failed Queta dunk attempt moments earlier.
All told, Tatum made five straight field goals after his 0-for-6 start. He then fed Brown for a layup before checking out just past the midway point of the third quarter.
“I thought he played with a free mind,” Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla said. “I thought he played with a sense of gratitude, a sense of perspective. I thought he played with a sense of freedom of, you know, ‘I’m here. I’ve accepted this, I’m grateful for this and how can I continue to grow and get better, but also be myself?’ We cannot have a lesser version of him, so I think it’s a good balance.”
A 13-5 run with Tatum on the bench, capped by 3-pointers from Pritchard and rookie Hugo Gonzalez, stretched the Celtics’ lead to double digits. Tatum returned to play the first seven minutes of the fourth before being shut down for the night.
He and Brown weren’t able to execute a fast-break lob they attempted with 7:17 to play, but Brown salvaged that possession with a layup, and Tatum sank his third three of the night on Boston’s next trip down the floor. He received another standing ovation when Baylor Scheierman — the player bounced from Boston’s starting lineup to make room for Tatum — replaced him with 5:01 remaining and the Celtics up 112-87.
“The fact that I was able to even be out there tonight was a really big win for me,” Tatum said.