Celtics made the right decision to sit Jayson Tatum at Suns
Jayson Tatum is one of the NBA’s elite on-court talents, but his most underrated quality is how often he’s on the court in the first place.
Tatum needs to play four of the Celtics’ final nine games to reach 70 played for the fourth season in a row, and the fifth time in eight NBA seasons. His career low is 64, and that was out of 72 games in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 campaign. So, he’s never played less than 88.9% of the season.
A recent ankle sprain threatened to keep Tatum out for the most time in his career so far. His apparent efforts to get right back out on the court on Wednesday night in Phoenix are admirable and respectable — but it was ultimately the right decision to hold him out.
For starters, the Celtics clearly didn’t need Tatum to blister the Suns, as they won by a neat & tidy final of 132-102. Kristaps Porziņģis predictably picked up the scoring slack with a team-best 30 points.
Second, the C’s are solidly the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference at this point. Entering Thursday, they’re 4.5 games behind the top-seeded Cavaliers with nine games to go, and Cleveland has a game in hand. With the Knicks behind the Celtics by 8.5 games, Boston has all but clinched a top-two spot. It’s not worth putting Tatum’s health on the line to make a concerted final push for the No. 1 seed, as the Celtics should be able to beat the Cavs in a seven-game series with or without home court advantage.
In the immediate aftermath of the injury, it felt appropriate to call for Tatum to just rest for the remainder of the regular season. This is uncharted territory for the Celtics, with their superstar suffering an injury at the time of a relatively meaningless stretch run. But it’s an easy move to keep Tatum off the court until his ankle is back to 100%.
And considering that this is ostensibly your standard, run-of-the-mill sprained ankle, it’s entirely possible that Tatum is good to go within the next 18 days. Final tune-ups before the playoffs begin would make perfect sense.
But it made no sense to rush Tatum back to action in the first game after the injury. Tatum was originally listed as “doubtful” for Wednesday’s game, and was later upgraded to “questionable” as he made an effort to try to play. Tatum deserves credit for wanting to play and pushing to get back out there, but for the sake of the team, playing him against the Suns would’ve been unnecessary — frankly, stupid.
It seems Tatum won’t be out for long. Head coach Joe Mazzulla told 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Zolak & Bertrand Thursday that the C’s will “do what’s best for the team” and sounded optimistic that Tatum could return sometime this weekend.
But taking it slow with his recovery is the right thing to do, now and going forward. With the regular season winding down and the playoffs fast approaching, as the C’s look to repeat as champions, the health of their best players should be of utmost importance.
Matt Dolloff is a writer and digital content producer for 98.5 The Sports Hub. Read all of his articles here.
