Jaylen Brown Addresses Jayson Tatum's Frustration and How Celtics Need To Move Forward

The Boston Celtics have been good this season. They come into this Wednesday night matchup with the OKC Thunder just percentage points ahead of the New York Knicks in the standings and a slim one-game advantage in the loss column, but an advantage nonetheless. Many in the NBA and NBA media consider Boston the favorites to come out of the East, especially now that they have Jayson Tatum back.

But while Tatum has been good, he hasn’t been “Jayson Tatum” yet. That's not a surprise, or at least it shouldn’t be, considering he’s back after only 10 months following his Achilles tear. The rehab to get to this point was pretty linear, with benchmarks to hit, boxes to check, and then another goal to work towards.

It’s like learning music, with notes to read, finger placement to perfect, and obvious progress to be made. But now Tatum is playing in NBA games, which is sort of like joining a jam band. You can’t just dive in and expect it to be good right away.

“I ain't know how this s--t was going to be,” Tatum said after losing to Minnesota this weekend. “It's tough. In the moment, you try not to think about it, you just want to be Jayson Tatum and feel like yourself again. I'm not Superman, so it's obviously going to take some time. I think the next day I can give myself a little more grace over certain things, but in the moment, it's frustrating.”

That frustration is obvious, as are some of the issues Tatum is having with a lack of explosion on his drives and a jumper that's not quite wet yet. But Joe Mazzulla and the Celtics understand his frustrations and are working with him to get past them.

“Even if he was 100 percent healthy you’d still be frustrated if you weren’t your best self,” Mazzulla said after the team’s practice on Tuesday. “When we’re between those lines there’s no grace. There are the things you have to do. When you step out of those lines, here’s the stuff you’re doing well, here’s the stuff we have to get better, and here’s the stuff that’s gonna come with time. And you just keep it to that. And he does a really good job of processing that and we just have to go from there.”

Of course, at times like this, people start to have questions about how well the team can handle a bump in the road like this. The Celtics have done a great job without Tatum during the regular season, coming up with a style of play that has suited them. But even as those questions have been asked, like by Tracy McGrady on NBC after the Celtics loss to the Timberwolves, the team has stuck together.

On his Twitch stream, Jaylen Brown expressed his support and confidence in Tatum’s process.

“We're not where we need to be yet, so it's gonna take some growth,” Brown said. “And that's alright. JT is coming back. Obviously, he's big for our team, and we need him to be the version of JT that he feels confident in, he feels comfortable with. So some of that takes some ups and downs, but I got full belief in Jayson Tatum. I got full belief in our team, and we just got to keep our connectivity and handle our adversity the right way.”

This is the key for the Celtics. They have 11 games left to play, which is not a lot of time to figure some of these things out. They can’t let outside noise seep into the locker room and disrupt what is a very delicate process of reintegrating a superstar player off a major injury.

Everything that the players needed to prove this season has been proven. All the individual things that were questioned before the season have been answered, and done so emphatically. The last thing that this team needs to prove is that it can get through this patch together and come out on the other side a better team ready to make a deep playoff run.

“I'm looking forward to the rest of the season. We definitely gotta keep building,” Brown said. “Everything ain't always going to go your way in life. You got to remember that … You're not gonna win every game, so you definitely gotta roll with the punches. So that's what we looking to do.”