the first-ever team to win four games as a five-seed to claim the title<\/a>. \u201cThat was a special week,\u201d Tatum says.<\/p>\nDuke didn\u2019t fare quite as well in March Madness that year, losing in the second round. Three months later, Tatum was drafted by Boston as the third overall pick in 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t an easy decision. I wasn\u2019t ready to leave,\u201d Tatum says of departing Duke after one year. \u201cBut my lifelong dream was to go to the NBA.\u201d He returns to Durham most summers and is now the Chief Basketball Officer for the program. As the CBO, Tatum says coaches and players can bounce ideas off him to improve the program. He watches as many Duke games as possible. And, of course, he\u2019s rooting for them to win it all this March. The Blue Devils entered the 2026 tournament as a 1-seed, then survived a close first-round matchup against 16-seed Siena, 71-65. Duke won its second-round game versus TCU more handily 81-58, with momentum ahead of its Sweet 16 matchup with 5-seed St. John\u2019s on March 27 .<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we love about March Madness is win or go home,\u201d Tatum says. Often, the matchups are teams that don\u2019t play each other in the regular season. The locations are different; the cities are new. \u201cAll of those factors really heighten the experience for the fans, the teams, and bring out the best in the athletes,\u201d Tatum says. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen it\u2014on any given day, anybody can win, and that\u2019s what we love about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, the Celtics were a strong contender to repeat as NBA champions. But on May 12, 2025, in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals against New York, Tatum ruptured his Achilles tendon. Boston subsequently lost to the Knicks in six games.<\/p>\n
The recovery wasn\u2019t easy. Tatum is very close to his mother, Brandy, so he lived with her for the first ten weeks post-injury because he couldn\u2019t walk up and down steps. \u201cIt was like being in high school again,\u201d Tatum says.<\/p>\n
Despite his limitations, those early weeks taught him about himself. \u201cI realized that I was stronger than I thought I was,\u201d Tatum says. \u201cInitially, I had a lot of doubt. Candidly, I wasn\u2019t sure I\u2019d be able to go through rehab. But I just tried to put my best foot forward every day and show up.\u201d<\/p>\n
The process, he says, also taught him not to be afraid to test himself. \u201cYou\u2019d be surprised at what your body can respond well to and handle,\u201d he says. Recovery modalities continue to evolve, and he embraced that part of the process. He watched movies, surrounded himself with family and friends, and tried different ways to distract his mind from what he was physically going through.<\/p>\n
He also leaned on what nine years of NBA experience had taught him. In those early NBA years, league veterans showed him how to train and play for career longevity. \u201cYour body is your temple,\u201d Tatum says. How he eats, how he recovers, how he prepares for a game, how he practices\u2014it all adds up over the course if an eight-or-nine-month season. And his choices are thoughtful and intentional. \u201cThey all matter,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
![\"orlando,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/e99cd7fc-2b4e-4946-81b7-353450c655ea.jpg\" "\\"Boston")
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Julio Aguilar\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Ten months later, on March 6, 2026, Tatum returned to the court. While he\u2019s grateful to be playing again, he\u2019s still learning how to find the balance and give himself grace. \u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019m literally, actively trying to figure out,\u201d Tatum says. \u201cIt\u2019s not easy. Athletes at this level, you work so hard, you want it so badly. It can be frustrating at times.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where patience factors in, too. A laid-back, quiet person, Tatum says that becoming a father at age 20 helped him learn a new kind of patience (he also has a 21-month-old son, Dylan, who appears with him in the commercial). He reminds himself not to rush a moment, good or bad. Basketball has been the glue connecting him to all those experiences.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasketball has taken me all over the world,\u201d Tatum says. \u201cIt\u2019s opened doors for me, the people and the relationships I\u2019ve been able to build have in some way, shape or form stemmed from basketball. I couldn\u2019t be more grateful for all the things basketball has provided for me, my family and my kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Headshot](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/38249a1b-f8d4-46bd-8103-7155928c4b1b_1608235094.jpg\" "\\"Headshot")
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Anna Katherine Clemmons is an adjunct professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, and has written for numerous publications, including ESPN the Magazine and The New York Times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"4 min read BOSTON CELTICS STAR Jayson Tatum says he was \u201cglued to the TV\u201d during March Madness…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[242176,872,242175,874,873,355,221158,242174,99],"class_list":["post-541127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-collection-march-madness-2026","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-cdcfc9a0-b4c0-4891-b8d3-b0c9e4099d04","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-locale-us","tag-nba","tag-read_time-5","tag-shorttitle-jayson-tatum-talks-march-madness","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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4 min read<\/p>\n