How Jayson Tatum’s Terrific Play After Return From Achilles Injuries Stacks Up Across NBA History

On Wednesday night, Jayson Tatum posted a triple-double in his 12th game back from his Achilles injury.

Read that again: Jayson Tatum posted a triple-double in his 12th game back from his Achilles injury. Who could have possibly imagined that sentence even just four weeks ago?

Nobody really knew what Tatum would look like after suffering one of the worst lower-body injuries in sports and subsequently missing 10 months of basketball as he underwent rehab. Achilles injuries are infamous for sapping athletes of their athleticism; it’s a key tendon for jumping, pivoting, planting and most other actions basketball players engage in dozens of times every game they play. It’s also an injury notorious for making players second-guess their own bodies, making the mental hurdle sometimes as large as the physical one leading up to a player’s return to the floor. It was entirely valid to wonder if the Celtics would be getting the same version of the superstar forward back—or an imitation whose style of play would be changed forever by a catastrophic injury.

At large the book is still out on whether Tatum can return to his former First-Team All-NBA form. But he’s no imitation despite suffering what has long been seen as a career-altering injury. And his triple-double on Wednesday to help lead Boston past Miami is just the latest, loudest pronouncement of that reality.

In 12 games with Tatum back on the court, the Celtics have gone 10–2. He is averaging 21.3 points, 9.8 rebounds and 4.8 assists per game. Coach Joe Mazzulla gradually ramped up his minutes over that stretch; the star forward set a season high with 37 minutes on Wednesday and is now up to an average of 31.5 minutes a night. From an eye test standpoint the 28-year-old doesn’t look all that different. The rust is obvious at times and his conditioning is at an expected point for someone whose only been playing at NBA speed for a month. But Tatum’s leaping ability and lateral quickness—two of the biggest areas of concern for athletes returning from an Achilles injury—seem to be just fine.

It hasn’t all been great. He hasn’t been quite as impactful a defender as we’re accustomed to seeing, particularly when contesting drives. The efficiency numbers are brutal, too. He’s shooting 40.2% from the floor and 32.1% from deep despite taking north of nine three-pointers per game. As evidenced by the two or three airballs he’s still throwing up, Tatum’s touch remains a work in progress.

But despite all that he is stuffing the stat sheet and the Celtics are winning big with Tatum playing again—even beyond the sparkling win-loss record. Per PBP Stats, Boston boasts a net rating of +11.06 per 100 possessions in all of his minutes on the court. It is very impressive and, frankly, hard to believe that Tatum is making such an impact after 10 months off rehabbing one of the worst injuries an athlete can suffer.

To help put that into perspective, let’s look at how Tatum’s return has gone compared to past cases in NBA history.

Comparing Tatum’s return to past NBA stars to suffer Achilles injuries

Klay Thompson and Jayson Tatum are both veterans of the Achilles rehab process. | David Butler II-Imagn Images

Part of what made projecting Tatum’s impact post-Achilles so tricky? There isn’t a 1:1 comparison for the Celtics star. Numerous players have torn their Achilles tendon over the many years the NBA existed. But there are no previous cases of an annual All-NBA player doing so at 27 years old. Thus there is no squeaky-clean fit comparison-wise. But it’s still an informative exercise to see how his production compares to similar cases, if not carbon copies.

For this purpose, we will compare Tatum’s return to that of Dominique Wilkins, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson, Demarcus Cousins and Kobe Bryant. All were great players playing well before suffering this devastating injury (except Thompson, who suffered his torn Achilles while rehabbing from a torn ACL). All took different times to recover for different reasons; Bryant and Wilkins came back as soon as possible, while Durant’s recovery was extended a few months due to a delayed start to the 2020–21 NBA season. And they all returned to play at varying levels of quality.

How does Tatum’s first 12 games back stack up to the first 12 games of other players who have returned from the same injury?

PLAYER	RECOVERY TIME	PPG	RPG	APG
Jayson Tatum	10 months	21.3	9.8	4.8
Kevin Durant	18 months	31.3	7.5	7.0
Klay Thompson	30 months	16.7	3.3	3.0
Demarcus Cousins	11 months	14.2	7.1	3.7
Kobe Bryant*	8 months	13.8	4.3	6.3
Domonique Wilkins	9 months	28.0	8.0	2.8

*Bryant only played six games upon his return before suffering another injury

Overall these numbers indicate Tatum is playing above-average compared to how most guys look upon their return.

Durant and Wilkins are the outliers as two superstars who effectively picked up where they left off from the very first minute they returned to the floor. But Thompson, Bryant and Cousins all suffered statistical declines in line with what the sports world has come to expect from stars who suffer Achilles injuries. In a similar manner, KD and Wilkins enjoyed several more years of quality play before their games fell off due to age; for the other three players the Achilles injury was the start of a sharp drop-off from their former level of play.

So far Tatum’s return is trending towards KD/Domonique territory. He isn’t near his former levels of scoring yet, but the other parts of his game are just as good as they were before he got hurt. In the case of his rebounding it’s actually better, somehow—Tatum’s previous career high on the glass was 8.7 boards per game. Given rebounding is much more reliant upon the simple athleticism that Achilles injuries tend to rob athletes of than many other facets of the sport, the uptick should give the Celtics confidence that Tatum is moving in the right direction.

Regardless of how you grade Tatum’s return, it’s remarkable to watch. It would have been sad but no surprise if Tatum returned a shell of his former self, at least in the first few games back from injury. Instead he’s contributing to winning basketball and recording triple-doubles.

Is he the Jayson Tatum of last year? Not quite. But he’s far closer to that point than anybody had a right to expect at this stage of his return.

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