March 23, 2026, 5:24 p.m. ET

I’m not patting myself on the back about this, but make no mistake about it: I told y’all this would happen.

After missing 10 months of high-level basketball with his Achilles tendon tear, I told you Jayson Tatum would not look like JAYSON TATUM upon his return to the Boston Celtics. I also told you the Celtics would likely struggle to reintegrate the All-NBA-caliber forward into their lineup for a little while after spending 60 games without him. Real NBA basketball is not plug-and-play like a video game. NBA athletes are competitive, flawed human beings who need considerable time playing together before they can establish a healthy, cohesive rhythm. This is especially the case with a ball-dominant wing like Tatum coming off a serious, extended injury. You’re not going to plant a guy like that in the corner to shoot spot-up 3-pointers and call it a day.

Who would that serve? Why would the title-contending Celtics bring Tatum back less than a year after one of the worst athletic injuries if they didn’t want him to be himself? Make it make sense.

Yet, despite all of this context, here we are. We’re only a few weeks into Tatum’s Celtics comeback, and quite frankly, he looks like a shell of himself. He’s averaging less than 20 points per game. He’s only shooting 38 percent from the field and sub-30 percent from the 3-point line. And the Celtics’ offense looks pretty clunky, at least by their high standards.

Suffice it to say, this is not the version of Tatum we’ve grown accustomed to. Per CelticsBlog’s Noa Dalzell, Tatum himself acknowledged this tough reality after the Minnesota Timberwolves shut him down in an ugly home loss for the Celtics on Sunday:

“It’s tough in the moment, right?,” Tatum said. You try not to think about it. You just want to be Jayson Tatum and feel like yourself again. I’m not Superman, so it’s obviously gonna take some time. I think the next day, I can give myself a little more grace over certain things, but in the moment, it’s frustrating.”

Look, I recognize that some of the noise concerning Tatum is of the “people are saying” variety. That is, to say, it’s noise amplified from the loudest voices in bad faith. But let’s not lose the plot here.

These are the facts. Tatum isn’t a full calendar year removed from an Achilles tear. Nevertheless, after a 10-month absence, he’s playing basketball in the best men’s league in the world for one of its marquee franchises, which expects to compete for the league title in June, during the stretch run when everyone is jockeying for playoff positioning.

Do you know how absurd that is? How rare that is? How much pressure is involved?

After everything he’s endured, anyone who expected Tatum to get off the ground running and pick up where he left off is either a Celtics hater without shame, someone who doesn’t understand basic human kinetics, a brazen liar, or all of the above. Full stop. Given everything that’s demanded of an elite NBA player in this day and age, it’s in-cre-di-ble that Tatum came back to the Celtics this early.

People don’t do that, dearest readers. It’s not normal. Don’t get it twisted.

Call it a hunch, but I think we’ll see the consistent version of Tatum the Celtics are hoping for sometime later this spring. He’s too good and too cerebral to expect otherwise. His return at this point in the season was always about giving him a decent on-ramp for the postseason, after all. Some up-and-down play was in the cards. He and the Celtics both accounted for it. Just let him get his sea legs under him.

And even if it doesn’t happen for Tatum this season, his comeback story should be remembered as an unmitigated success, a medical miracle. Nothing else.

Shootaround

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