Tatum's injury reminds us how fragile careers, teams are

In my most anxious and introspective moments, I mostly just think about how fragile everything is; how nothing lasts, health is precarious, accidents happen, and lives can be permanently altered in a microsecond. Most of the time, though, I live in the moment and push my existential dread into the recesses of my brain. I wouldn't be able to function otherwise.

That's what life as an NBA fan can be like, too: living game to game, riding the ups and downs of each season, all the while trying to keep worst-case doomerism out of the frame. Given how hard it is for teams to pry open championship windows and how quickly we've seen so many of those windows slam shut, it's a lot easier to be a fatalist than an optimist. But fandom doesn't really work without optimism, so we do our best to ignore the voice in the back of our minds whispering that any flicker of joy is bound to be temporary.

Then you see Jayson Tatum crumple to the floor after trying to push off his back leg while lunging for a loose ball, and that sense of fragility immediately returns to the forefront. Tatum ruptured his Achilles tendon on a freak play with three minutes remaining in Monday's Game 4 loss to the New York Knicks. In an instant, the 27-year-old lost at least one season of his Hall of Fame prime while his Boston Celtics lost their shot at another championship - not only this year, but quite possibly for the foreseeable future.

It's devastating for Tatum, first and foremost. He was in the midst of one of his signature playoff performances, racking up 42 points (on 29 shooting possessions), eight rebounds, four assists, four steals, and two blocks before having to be carried off the court. He's worked tirelessly to turn himself into a top-five player in the sport, with a fourth straight first-team All-NBA nod surely coming his way.

He's added layer upon layer to his game, complementing his shooting and finishing ability with pristine footwork in tight spaces, increasingly sharp playmaking reads against every type of pick-and-roll coverage, and a hearty embrace of screen-setting that's rare for star perimeter players. At the defensive end, he's made Boston's cross-match-heavy scheme sing with his ability to defend opposing centers, jockeying in the post and battling on the boards while staying prepared to switch onto the opponent's primary ball-handler at any moment.

Availability has been one of his greatest abilities as well; he's never missed more than 10 games in any of his eight seasons. Tatum is young enough, skilled enough, big enough, and, at least to this point, durable enough to convince you he won't be totally railroaded by an injury that's railroaded so many careers in the past. Even so, some kind of physical tax has to be accounted for when projecting what he'll look like when he returns. Will he have the same burst going to the rim or finishing through contact? Will he be able to create as much separation on his side-step jumpers? Will he have the same pop as a weak-side rim-protector? Will he ever be this good again?

Every star injury is consequential, but not since the double whammy of Kevin Durant's torn Achilles and Klay Thompson's torn ACL during the 2019 Finals have we seen one with this kind of potential to destabilize a perennial contender. The Celtics are the defending champs, and they entered this postseason as betting favorites to repeat. Even if they'd gone on to lose their second-round series to the Knicks (which wouldn't have been a foregone conclusion even down 3-1, but certainly feels like one now), they'd have entered next season as one of the top three or four favorites to win the 2026 title with a healthy Tatum.

Despite only having the one banner to show for it, the Celtics have been the paragon of sustained excellence in the NBA for the last eight years, having won more regular-season games and playoff series than any other team since Tatum was drafted. They came up a win short of the Finals in his rookie season, and he led the team in scoring in those playoffs. Over the next six years, he and the Celtics went back to the East finals four times and the Finals twice, with Jaylen Brown being the only other constant - a run that finally culminated in last year's ring.

That run seemed as though it would continue in some fashion for a few more years, even with aging contributors on the roster and uncomfortable payroll decisions on the horizon. It was hard to imagine the Celtics drifting too far from the title picture as long as they had Tatum performing at this level. Now they're decidedly out of that mix, and it's not clear what kind of roster he'll return to when he's ready to take the court again for the 2026-27 campaign.

Al Horford, who remains a shockingly important piece for this team, will be 40 years old by then. Will he still be around, let alone effective? Jrue Holiday is already in decline at age 34; what will he look like at 36? Kristaps Porzingis' health and availability will only become bigger question marks as he ages, and he's a free agent after next season. Brown, Derrick White, and Payton Pritchard will probably still be in Boston and performing at high levels, but everything else feels up in the air.

Most pertinently, unless the Celtics shed significant salary this offseason, they'll become a repeat second-apron team with a luxury-tax hit that dwarfs the payroll of every NBA roster - including their own. That might have been palatable for Boston's new ownership group if the team was coming off a spirited repeat bid and looked primed to be firmly in the championship mix once again. That expenditure will be much harder to swallow for a team that could be hovering around play-in territory.

In an age of parity that's now poised to produce a seventh different champion in the last seven years, these Celtics had a chance to stamp themselves as an all-time team. And while it's possible Tatum comes back 17 months from now looking no worse for wear, and Boston picks up right where it left off, there's a greater chance that he'll return a slightly diminished player for a significantly diminished team, and this era of Celtics basketball as we know it is over.

If so, it was an awfully abrupt ending, but sometimes that's how these things go. In the NBA, as in life, you never have as much time as you feel like you're supposed to have. And you don't appreciate your best days quite enough while you're living them because you tend to imagine the future as more of the same. Tatum's injury was a stark reminder of how fragile all of this is, and, by the same token, a reminder not to take anything for granted.

Joe Wolfond writes about the NBA for theScore.