As the NBA fandom and community waited anxiously Tuesday morning for new information on the frightening injury to Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum, which he suffered on Monday night in the second round playoff Game Four against the New York Knicks, the first detail finally dropped shortly after 2 pm Eastern Time on Tuesday.![]()
A local Boston TV station, WCVB-TV, reported at about 1:30 pm that the 27-year-old Tatum “suffered an injury involving his Achilles tendon.” The station said that its information came from “an NBA source.”
For the latest information on the Tatum injury, please click this link.
According to ESPN NBA insider Shams Charania, Tatum underwent an MRI at a New York hospital earlier Tuesday. The results were not yet made public. But Charania gave a pessimistic outlook on Tatum’s, and Boston’s, prognosis.
“The Boston Celtics are bracing for the worst around Jayson Tatum and that right foot,” Charania said, interviewed on ESPN SportsCenter. “The Celtics since last night have been expecting a severe injury for Tatum”
The Celtics injury report for Game Five against the Knicks Wednesday in Boston is due under NBA rules, by 5 pm Eastern Time on Tuesday. At that time, the Celtics will be required to release at least some information on Tatum’s injury status.
The WCVB report quoted Dr. Rock Positano, director of the Joe DiMaggio Foot and Ankle Center at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, as saying that if indeed Tatum ruptured his Achilles tendon, the injury would be highly painful and recovery time could take four to six months.
With 3:04 remaining in the game and the Celtics trailing underdog New York by seven points, Tatum lunged for a loose ball and collapsed, clutching the back of his right ankle. In obvious pain, Tatum signaled for a time-out, calling the last available time-out for the Celtics.
After the game, won by the Knicks who took a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series, Tatum’s longtime teammate and fellow Celtics superstar Jaylen Brown appeared to be at a loss for words, stunned by the apparent severity of Tatum’s injury.
“I think everybody’s concerned with Jayson. I’m not sure how bad it is,” Brown said, as quoted by CBS Sports. “Didn’t look great. But I think everybody is kind of more concerned with that.”
Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla described what happened to Tatum as a “lower-body injury.”
“I talked to the medical staff, they told me it’s a lower body injury and he’ll get an MRI [Tuesday],” Mazzulla said in a postgame meeting with the press. “We’ll see where it goes from there.”
Mazzulla also added that “the fact that he had to be carried off — he’s the type of guy, he gets right up. He didn’t. It’s tough to watch a guy like him get carried off like that.”
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