BOSTON — Brad Stevens has a message for Jayson Tatum if the injured Boston Celtics star really wonders whether or not he would nonetheless slot in on the workforce he led to the 2024 NBA championship.
“Clearly, any workforce with Jayson Tatum’s going to be higher,” Stevens stated Friday. “If he wants it, I am going to inform him each day. As a result of each workforce — all 30 of us — can be means, means higher with him on the workforce.”
Tatum led Boston to its 18th title and had it on observe for a repeat final spring earlier than he tore his Achilles tendon within the Jap Convention semifinals in opposition to the New York Knicks. The Celtics appeared headed for a rebuilding yr once they traded key contributors Jrue Vacation and Kristaps Porzingis over the summer time to keep away from the punitive second apron of the league’s luxurious tax.
However they hit this week’s commerce deadline tied for the East’s second seed, with the likelihood {that a} late-season return by Tatum might ignite one other lengthy playoff run. Requested about that state of affairs final week, Tatum questioned whether or not he may upset the workforce’s chemistry by returning.
“That is one thing I ponder each day,” he stated on “The Pivot” podcast. “They might have performed 50-some odd video games with out me. In order that they have an identification this yr, or issues they’ve felt which have clicked for them, and it has been profitable.
“So there is a thought in my head that’s, like: ‘How does that work? How does that look with me integrating myself off an damage.’ And it’s a thought, like, ‘Rattling, do I come again, or ought to I wait?'”
Stevens stated that he hadn’t heard the podcast however that, from his conversations with the six-time All-Star, he hasn’t seen something apart from the standard doubts from a rehabbing participant about whether or not he would be capable to get again to the identical stage.
“These are simply issues that undergo all people’s minds,” Stevens stated, chuckling on the thought the workforce can be higher off with out Tatum. “In all of our conversations, he is assured he could make the workforce higher, too.”
For now, Tatum nonetheless has “a methods to go,” and the workforce is not going to hurry him, Stevens stated.
“He is hit plenty of the thresholds, he is doing an increasing number of and can proceed to do an increasing number of,” the previous Celtics coach and present president of basketball operations stated. “There is no stress from us. However there’s additionally not going to be any of us saying, ‘Properly, why do not you simply take one other week?’ It should be: When he is prepared, he is prepared.”
Regardless of Tatum’s absence and the offseason wage dump, the Celtics (33-18) received 4 straight video games heading into Thursday’s commerce deadline, when Stevens additional lowered the payroll by buying and selling Anfernee Simons to Chicago for Nikola Vucevic after which unloading Josh Minott, Xavier Tillman and Chris Boucher to maneuver beneath the posh tax threshold itself.
Initially a first-round draft choose by the 76ers, Vucevic made his NBA playoff debut when the Celtics of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen ousted Philadelphia within the 2011 Jap Convention semifinals. However the 35-year-old Montenegrin has been to the playoffs solely three extra occasions in a 15-year profession and has by no means received a postseason sequence.
“It is one thing that I believe each participant needs to get an opportunity to do, and make deep runs,” Vucevic instructed reporters Friday. “Sadly, I have not had the prospect to do this in my profession. So I am excited to be right here, be round a championship workforce, plenty of the gamers which have finished it earlier than and the teaching employees as properly, and the Celtics all through their historical past.”
Stevens stated swapping 6-foot-3 Simons for 6-9 Vucevic provides the workforce depth at huge man at the price of a place the place they continue to be comparatively deep. The potential for Tatum’s return did not play an element in his considering, Stevens stated.
“It is best for Jayson to come back when he is 110% wholesome, he is totally cleared by all people that issues in that call, and he is obtained nice peace of thoughts and able to do it,” Stevens stated. “That is it. That is the target, and that is what we will keep on with.”
