BOSTON \u2014 Jayson Tatum spent several minutes playing 1-on-1 with Celtics coaches yet again at the end of Celtics practice on Wednesday. The progress in the star\u2019s recovery from a torn Achilles is creating some buzz in the wake of Tatum posting several videos on his social media highlighting his increased activity on the floor. <\/p>\n
With Tatum seven months removed from surgery now, Joe Mazzulla was asked at Wednesday\u2019s practice about when the team would start to talk about a potential return to the court for the Celtics star during the 2025-26 season. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all up to him,\u201d Mazzulla said. \u201cAt the end of the day, his health is the most important thing, his process is the most important thing. You trust him, trust the team that\u2019s around him \u2014 he\u2019s got a great team \u2014 and you just kind of go from there. So kind of just all starts about where him and his team think he\u2019s at. To me, the only thing I care about is his presence and his leadership, and he\u2019s given that in different ways \u2014 on the floor in games, communicating with guys, in film sessions, traveling with us. At the end of the day, he\u2019s on our team. He\u2019s a part of our team. He\u2019s helping us get better, and then everything else just comes down to him and the people around him, and you just trust that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mazzulla was also asked about whether he would try to exercise caution for Tatum when he\u2019s eventually cleared to play.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not gonna do anything,\u201d Mazzulla said. \u201cThere\u2019s people above me that are responsible for that. It\u2019s not my job. My job is to just support him, be there for them, listen to them, and at the end of the day, you trust the people that are around him.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Celtics star spoke at length about his recovery last week in an appearance on a podcast with former teammate Marcus Morris. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m feeling good,\u201d Tatum said. \u201cMan, it\u2019s been a journey. This rehab (expletive) ain\u2019t no joke. It\u2019s been 29 weeks yesterday. So every Tuesday is a week. I\u2019m feeling better, though. I\u2019ve had 29 weeks to really work on my body. This is the strongest I\u2019ve ever been. This is the best the rest of my body has ever felt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mazzulla has admired of the work Tatum has been putting in while aggressively attacking his rehab. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe encouraging thing is that he is who he is,\u201d Mazzulla said. \u201cI care more about, obviously, him doing his job. He has a job just like we do, and it\u2019s his prep, it\u2019s his — I think it\u2019s harder to rehab than it is to be in the season sometimes because you have to do things at a higher intensity, at a higher pace. So he\u2019s doing that, but I care more about (the fact that) he\u2019s on the team, he\u2019s helping us get better. That\u2019s the most important thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tatum is still likely months away from being cleared for a potential return, but the Celtics could be in a very more promising place than anticipated when he returns to the floor. The third-seeded team in the East will go for their sixth straight win on Thursday night against the Bucks. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOSTON \u2014 Jayson Tatum spent several minutes playing 1-on-1 with Celtics coaches yet again at the end of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-337456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}