Boston Celtics' Jayson Tatum opened up about his recovery from a torn Achilles tendon, this season, and the pressure he felt alongside All-Star Jaylen Brown to win, while reflecting on their championship run in 2024. It didn't take Tatum long to figure out playing for the Celtics means you're held to a higher standard, especially coming off of consecutive trips to the Eastern Conference Finals, as Brown had in his first two seasons in Boston.
Despite Tatum and Brown being in their early twenties, Tatum says the All-Star tandem, playing for the most storied franchise in the NBA, were expected to win a championship, especially after playing alongside one another for a few seasons, he said, per The Pivot podcast.
“We were held to a much higher standard than everyone else, which is part of being in Boston, playing for the Celtics. You're expected to win championships,” Tatum said. “We're just thankful that we had an organization that believed that we could be the cornerstones of bringing a championship with the right pieces around us.
“As we got older, we both got paid, we both had individual success, and All-Stars. Now, let's figure out how do we put it all together. We went to two Finals, one one of them. Hopefully, we got much more to accomplish with each other.”
Without Tatum, who has spent the entire season working his way back from one of the more grueling injuries there is in basketball, the Celtics, led by Jaylen Brown, are 29-17, which is the second-best record in the Eastern Conference.
Jayson Tatum says he considered retirement amid injury
Celtics star Jayson Tatum contemplated retiremement after his MRI scan following his torn Achilles tendon injury in the Eastern Conference semifinals series against the Knicks. A sobbing Tatum couldn't fathom the uphill battle ahead of him, seeing the results from his first MRI scan made the process feel all the more impossible.
“Sitting in that doctor’s office, and seeing the doctor put that MRI scan and seeing that, line through my tendon, I just remember sitting there and I broke down crying,” Tatum said. “And I remember saying like, ‘man, I can’t do this.’ Because I just knew how hard it was going to be. And I felt like this was the best version of Jayson Tatum has ever been. And now it’s like, ‘damn, I got to start over.’ And I remember saying, ‘I can’t do this.’”
It took Tatum a while to come to grips with the severity of his injury.
“And you know, it took time. It was a few weeks where I thought about like, ‘damn did I make enough money, did I accomplish enough,’” Tatum continued. “Like it was some moments like laying in my house with my foot up where I thought like, ‘damn, I might be done.’”
Soon enough, Tatum was in the gym taking the necessary steps to begin his recovery, where he continues to make progress, with a potential return looming before the end of the Celtics' 2025-26 campaign.
