The Boston Celtics Lost, But Jayson Tatum Was The Biggest Winner of the Night

There isn’t much new for Jayson Tatum in basketball anymore. He’s been around long enough to have seen just about everything by now. But Thursday night in New York was different.

Tatum was nervous.

“This was a big moment, big hurdle for me,” Tatum said after the Boston Celtics loss to the Knicks. “I was nervous and anxious to come back here.”

The last time Tatum was inside Madison Square Garden, he was wheeled out, unsure of whether this moment would ever come again. His body gave out on him, in the prime of his life, during a critical basketball moment.

MSG became a haunted house for Tatum. There was a spirit inside with unfinished business. Tatum needed to exorcise it.

“Obviously, I wanted to win and play great,” Tatum said, standing the locker room. “But more importantly, I just kind of wanted to walk off the court on my own two feet.”

Tatum neither won nor played great, at least not great enough to win. His final stat line, 24 points, 13 rebounds, and eight assists was certainly gaudy, but the -16 told a bigger story. In reality, though, there was nothing negative about this night for him. Not after everything that happened. Tatum was a winner on Thursday night, scoreboard be damned.

“Today was important for me, especially when I made the decision to come back and made the decision to play today,” Tatum said. “I'm glad I did. I feel a lot better today, even though we lost.”

Tatum has been open about his journey back from the torn Achilles he suffered 11 months ago. He has spent his entire career as polished as an athlete can be with the media. He knows the script and he has generally stuck to it when the cameras are on. But life threw the script out the window, so Tatum has rolled with more honesty about what he’s feeling than ever before.

“I think one of his greatest strengths is just his vulnerability and openness and his understanding. It’s an opportunity tonight, obviously another small checkmark in his journey, which he’s done a great job handling those,” Mazzulla said before the game. “There’s a ton of emotions but also opportunity and I think he’s ready for that.”

Mazzulla is one of Earth’s biggest proponents of embracing fear and uncertainty and facing it head-on. We aren’t infants with an underdeveloped sense of object permanence. Closing our eyes doesn’t make things go away. Tatum’s physical recovery has been amazing, but his mental recovery is still a work in progress.

“I'm definitely checking off a lot of boxes,” he said. “This is one of the last few, obviously, playoffs are coming up soon, but this is one of the ones that was at the top.”

Tatum was aware of where he was standing when he got to that spot on the floor. At morning shoot around, during pregame warmups, as he ran over it his first time down the floor, it was a reminder of how close he came to losing it all, but also how far he’s come.

Suddenly, ten grueling months of recovery, starting with the struggling to even move a toe, to his first steps on the practice floor, to hearing his name called in front of 19,000 fans, was all reduced to a blur. There were days that felt like a lifetime, with nothing but the silence and intrusive thoughts to keep him company.

And now here he was, back in that spot, almost like it was all just a big fever dream. It all went away so quickly, but now it’s all back.

“Last time I was in here, I couldn't walk. And now today was like, the first time it felt that it went by kind of quick,” Tatum said. “I remember the incident like it happened yesterday. So today was the first time that I felt like it kind of went by fast.”

It all happened. There's a scar on his leg that will always remind him of that. But Tatum is now one big step closer to playing like nothing happened, whic makes him the biggest winner on that floor Thursday night.