Within the opening recreation of the Boston Celtics’ playoff run, Jayson Tatum suffered a bone bruise to his taking pictures wrist. The All-NBA ahead missed Recreation 2 towards the Orlando Magic. Nonetheless, upon his return, Tatum, sporting a closely wrapped wrist, continued to impress.
In his 4 outings towards the Magic, Tatum averaged 31.3 factors, 11.3 rebounds and 5.3 assists. He shot the rock at a 36.4 % clip from deep and a 50 % success charge from two-point vary. As such, discuss of Tatum’s damage rapidly pale away.
Nonetheless, bone bruises aren’t identified to heal rapidly. Tatum has seemingly been enjoying by means of ache and discomfort. He may very well be aggravating his damage little by little with postseason video games coming thick and quick.
And, judging by Tatum’s sudden drop-off in manufacturing over his first two video games towards the New York Knicks, that wrist situation is the one logical conclusion.
In his first two video games of the Jap Convention semifinals, Tatum is averaging 18 factors, 15 rebounds and 5.5 assists. Nonetheless, his taking pictures splits are abysmal, as he knocks down simply 25 % of his three-point photographs and 31.8 % of his two-point makes an attempt.
There’s a problem exterior of a taking pictures droop. You do not go from 30+ factors per recreation to 18 per evening with no catalyst.
Maybe Tatum’s damage from Recreation 1 is lastly catching up with him? Perhaps making an attempt to play towards the scale and size of the Knicks roster is deterring him from discovering the extent of aggressiveness he must be profitable?
Regardless of the purpose, the Celtics want Tatum to faucet into his celebrity talent set and drag them again into the collection. If he can not play at that stage, he ought to sit on the bench and proceed to heal.
Celtics followers are at present trying to find solutions to what is going on incorrect. Sadly, an damage from weeks in the past may very well be the deciding consider how profitable Boston is within the present playoff run, and that is one thing nobody was anticipating.
