Jayson Tatum's Game-Winner Answered One Question, He Answered The Other One Himself

Jayson Tatum knew the math before he caught the ball on Tuesday night. With 2.3 seconds left in overtime against the Nets, he figured he had "probably like two dribbles" to work with.

So he and Payton Pritchard ran a little two-man game off the ball to force a switch, which Brooklyn wasn’t supposed to do, but they had no choice. Tatum, now being guarded by 6-5 rookie Mikel Brown Jr., popped free, drove left, and rose up.

"Just trying to get to a spot and get a clean look," Tatum said.

They don’t get much cleaner than the one he got. As the shot fell through, Tatum bounced back towards his bench, jumped into a flying back-bump celebration, and got to soak up the glory of winning a game the Boston Celtics spent most of the evening trying to give away.

"Something in my mind clicks"

Nobody needs convincing that Tatum is back. If we toss out the tough opener in Detroit, he's averaging 33 points, 7 rebounds and 7 assists on 49% shooting over his last three games. Those are MVP numbers.

But is he back back? Physically, the answer is obvious. He just played 42 minutes on the second night of a back-to-back and closed the game strong. He looks like Jayson Tatum. But coming back from an Achilles injury is about much more than a healed tendon. He has to heal his mind. This was a good start.

"That was a hell of a feeling, just kind of getting back to doing things that I used to do before I was injured and sharing that moment with my teammates on the court," Tatum said. "I'm 18 months out from when I tore my Achilles. And there's certain moments throughout a game, on and off the ball, where I'm doing a cut or exploding or just doing something that something in my mind clicks, and like, 'Oh, you know, that feeling is really starting to feel like pre-injury.'"

There's clearly a part of him that still feels there's more to unlock. It’s not a checklist item, but something instinctive: the moment you do something without thinking and only realize afterward that you haven't done it since the injury.

“I get really excited about some of the movements that I make throughout the game," he said. When asked whether those were movements he couldn't make last spring, he didn't hesitate: "Totally. Totally different."

Tatum came back in 10 months, which he wears as a badge of honor. But even as his body was responding well physically, the injury never left his head.

“I'd be lying if I said I wasn't thinking about it at least at some point every game, like it was on my mind,” he said. “Now, practicing, playing, driving downhill, whatever it may be, the thought process of just thinking about the game and what's going on, and not necessarily thinking about my body, is what I'm talking about. Just that mindset.”

Post-injury Tatum is emerging from a chrysalis this season. He’s the same being he was before, but "Once you go through something traumatic like that, you're never gonna be the same person, right? I went through something career altering and life altering for a moment. So, like being the same? I will never be the same person.”

The January test

Paul George understands where Tatum is.

“I've been in his position, being out from an injury,” George said. “You come back to the game, you see the game differently. What I see is a maturity. … He's making the right plays, and he's getting assists, and he's getting guys involved. He knows the attention that he draws … the game looks like it's slowing down, he's kind of in that zone of seeing plays ahead of time.”

The clearest indication of trusting one’s body is throwing it into the most crowded spot on the floor over and over again. His 22 free throws against the Nets weren't cheap. Tatum has been a finesse player for most of his life, so unlocking a bit of basketball bully has been a bit of a challenge.

Here's the catch with playing through contact: it's easy to demand from the sidelines or behind a keyboard. It’s completely different when it’s Julius Randle or Jalen Duren that you're crashing into. Tatum found that out late in regulation when he checked out briefly after banging knees with Randle.

"Like a little stinger," he said. "I had to sit down for a second, let it calm down."

Those things pile up. Every drive is another bump and bruise. It's not even Halloween, and Tatum is being asked to carry a team with less help than he’s used to. Can he take this kind of pounding in January, on a long road trip, on tired legs? Does a fatigued leg respond the way it did before the injury?

Not the face, but the phone call

Tatum has checked all the boxes he needs to check at this point. If there's something new to experience, he’ll figure it out as it happens. He doesn't want to be the poster child for this process, but he has no choice. Tatum once leaned on those who suffered this injury before him, but now, he is the flashpoint of a new kind of Achilles recovery. He’s the example, and everyone who suffers the injury from now on will be calling him.

He’ll be there to answer.

“We're all under this umbrella of the NBA brotherhood and we've all made it to a place where we share the same bond,” he said. “Unfortunately when this happens to other guys, they have reached out and I know exactly how they feel. I know exactly the mental state that they're in and I know how much it meant to me when guys reached out and checked on me or gave me some advice. So yeah, the whole peer-to-peer, off-the-court encouragement, it goes a long way. And I know guys appreciate it.”

Tatum is still taking all the Achilles questions and giving long, thoughtful answers to them. That suggests he’s still in the process of working his way through some element of the recovery, even if he’s fully recovered. In that sense, it’s hard to know if Tatum is back back.

But he trusts his body. And his teammates trust him. The grind of the season might present more questions, but Tuesday night showed Tatum is ready with the answers.

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