Doctors Fear Worst For Jayson Tatum, Celtics With Long Recovery Ahead

The Celtics might not have Jayson Tatum the rest of the playoffs. In fact, they might not have him for a good chunk of next season, too.

Boston lost a pivotal Game 4 to the New York Knicks on Monday night at Madison Square Garden to fall behind 3-1 in their second-round series. That should be of secondary concern, though, after Tatum went down in the final moments of the game with what looked to be a serious injury.

There wasn’t much of a postgame update regarding the injury. Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said the team would wait for an MRI on Tuesday before giving any concrete update. However, some experts believe Tatum’s injury is the worst-case scenario.

The obvious fear is that Tatum suffered a torn Achilles, and multiple doctors shared that fear in posts late Monday night.

Dr. Jesse Morse, a board-certified physician who is also the CEO of Injury Expertz, tweeted his potential diagnosis based on what he saw in the replays.

“My concern is a torn right Achilles tendon for Jayson Tatum,” Morse tweeted. “Pushed off, leg gave out, immediately grabbed, writhing in pain. Couldn’t bear any weight and needed to be wheelchaired off.”

Dr. Evan Jefferies, a doctor of physical therapy, agreed.

“The way he stepped back and immediately kind of just gave up his right leg and went to the ground,” Jeffries said on his podcast Monday night. “You can kind of see when his foot steps on the ground, and he goes into plantar flexion, and his heel drops and you kind of see a little reverberation, a little vibration up the calf. Unfortunately, those are typically signs of Achilles rupture, Achilles tear of the tendon.”

Like Morse, Jeffries hoped it could be something else, perhaps an ankle, but he wasn’t optimistic.

“The hope would be it’s somehow not officially torn. However, I will say with Achilles tendon injuries, you know right away,” he said. ” … There’s a Thompson test. You squeeze the calf, and if the foot doesn’t go down into plantar flexion, the Achilles essentially is gone. More than likely they have a pretty solid idea. … They more than likely would have to repair it.”

A third doctor, Dr. Brian Sutterer, agreed, saying “this is going to be an Achilles tendon injury until proven otherwise” on a YouTube video breaking down the play.

If it is a torn Achilles, the road to recovery is long. Jeffries indicated it’s a nine-to-12-month process, and with it already being mid-May, that means Tatum’s 2025-26 season would likely be gone. He also noted how Kevin Durant and Kobe Bryant both lost entire seasons to the injury.

The only potential silver lining is that Tatum has age on his side. He’s just 27. For example, Durant was 32 when he missed an entire season, and he has come back to average 27.9 points per game since missing all of 2019-20.

But as Jeffries tweeted, the hope among Celtics at this point is: “Let’s hope the video lies.”