Rockets' Kevin Durant is Impressed with Jayson Tatum's Injury Recovery

This year's Boston Celtics team hasn't been nearly the contender that we've grown accustomed to them being. Granted, they were expected to take a step back without Jayson Tatum, because every team would regress without a top-10 player.

It would be foolish to expect anything different. At least on that front.

The Celtics also parted with Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis in the offseason also, as they sought to find a way to attain long-term salary cap relief.

The new CBA (well, relatively newer) is no joke.

Derrick White was going to get a bigger role, which he certainly seemed ready for and capable of.

Except that hasn't quite gone according to plan. Surprise, surprise -- asking a high quality role player to take on the load and role of a nightly superstar doesn't always work.

Similar to when the Houston Rockets first signed Trevor Ariza in 2009, fresh off winning a championship with the Los Angeles Lakers as a role player, and hoped to scale him up as a nightly scoring threat.

It didn't work and Ariza didn't last more than one season (although he later rejoined the franchise as a high-value role player in 2014).

Brown has also had his ups and downs this season. Sure, he's averaging a cahreer-best 27.7 points on good shooting splits (53.5 percent from the field, 38.9 percent from three, 78.6 percent from the foul line, 63.3 percent true shooting) but he was held to just 12 points when the Celtics faced the Rockets (in addition to five turnovers).

After Houston's 128-101 beatdown of the Celtics, Rockets superstar forward Kevin Durant stopped to speak to the media and couldn't help but marvel at Tatum's progress in his Achilles recovery.

"At five to six months, I wouldn’t say I felt that confident to dunk the ball. Medicine has advanced so much since I had my Achiiles and Jayson looks like he’s just killing the rehab. He looks great. I don’t see a limp. For someone to just have an achilles surgery in the playoff, he looks amazing."

Durant knows a thing or two about this particular injury, having gone through it himself in the 2019 NBA Finals.

Durant missed the following season in its entirety, which is about what one would expect for that particular injury.

Tatum has left the door open on a return this season.

The Rockets superstar noted how much the game misses Tatum, hoping for continued progress in Tatum's rehab and recovery.