You know how Batman has the Bat Signal to project a big light in the sky for when people need him the most? I have my own Bat Signal, except it’s exclusively for Boston Celtics content emergencies. I call it the “why is everyone in my day-to-day life asking me this question?” Signal. We’re working on the name.
Right now, the signal is going crazy with a simple message: will Jayson Tatum return to play for the Celtics this season? Contained in that question are easy follow-ups: should he return? Is he rushing back? Will it be bad for team chemistry? Is there going to be a conflict with Jaylen Brown, who’s been a low-key MVP candidate this year?
When the Signal is shining this bright, you know I have the answers. And the answers are … I don’t care. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I recuse myself. I pardon you all from the suffering of trying to answer these questions. I release you, because the answers are “unknowable and irrelevant,” two words to live by and also my nickname in college.
So to keep things knowable and relevant, here’s the distillation: Jayson Tatum returning to play this season is simply a non-issue for Celtics fans, for Boston sports media or for anyone else with their emotional or professional wellbeing wrapped up in the Boston basketball industrial complex. Whatever ends up being Tatum and the team’s decision will be the right decision, and there is no reason to worry about this.
There are two basic questions people are trying to answer: will Jayson Tatum come back this season, and should he come back. Both are not rational discussions and thus we should not have them. Here’s why.
First, I am not some kind of debate detractor. Generally, I think it’s fine to discuss anything in potent or polemical public pieces in parallel publications, such as whether the New England Patriots were frauds, if Olympic Curling is the best competitive entertainment product since Season 1 of Survivor or the necessity of aggressive alliteration with the letter P in the fifth paragraph of an article about Jayson Tatum. All of that is fair game, because the parameters of those discussions are reasonably equal.
The problem with the “will Jayson Tatum come back?” question is that any rational argument about that would require a baseline of medical information that we simply do not have. Reading tea leaves about the five-part docuseries about his road to recovery or that the NBA flexed a March 1 game to primetime on NBC suggests a fairly commercial motivation for returning to play, something I do not believe Tatum or the Celtics would ever risk.
Even more insane is trying to determine if he is rushing back from his injury or is putting himself at additional risk by not sitting out the whole season—as if any of us have literally any idea what we’re talking about in the field of a specific individual’s recovery from Achilles surgery. If you want to speculate on that, I have a quick questionnaire for you to fill out: 1. Are you an Achilles surgeon/specialist or do you have intimate access to one? 2. If yes, is said specialist Jayson Tatum’s doctor themselves? 3. If yes, you may now speculate.
Basically, it doesn’t matter if Tatum is rushing back from his injury; if he comes back, I am forced to assume it was the right decision because there is no planet where I could possibly dispute it. It’s a hard thing to do for someone who thinks they have a right to comment on everything that happens with this team, but I am hereby recusing myself entirely.
We move now to the basketball consequences of Tatum’s return, namely the glorious question of “should he return, even if healthy?” The Celtics are playing great, Jaylen Brown has been a revelation and it would be risky to disrupt such great chemistry, right? Maybe just see how this thing goes and bring Tatum back for next season, right? Right? RIGHT!?
If you are worried about that, I have yet another question for you: are you kidding me?
The Celtics not bringing back Jayson Tatum because they are worried he will make the team worse is like not cashing your monthly paycheck because you’re worried it will make your wallet a little heavier in your left pocket. It’s like not listening to the new Kendrick album because you’re worried you’ll like some songs and it will disrupt your carefully curated Spotify playlists by adding them. It’s like—are we being serious about asking if adding 27-year-old, four-time All-NBA First Team Jayson Tatum to the basketball team is going to make the team worse at basketball?!?
Basketball teams are not porcelain figurines that may break at the first stiff breeze they encounter. They are built through blood, sweat and work over months; they need every single piece they can get. If that piece is Tatum, it would be an excellent one to add. There is nothing more to litigate.
The reason people still want to litigate it is, probably, because there is real money riding on the Celtics in the form of win-total or Championship futures, Jaylen Brown MVP odds and an untold number of gambling stakes in whether Jayson Tatum returns or not. But even gambling discussions must base themselves on logical parameters, and as we have functionally proven, such parameters do not exist in this dojo.
If Tatum returns, it will be good for the Celtics. If something goes wrong afterward, it will be bad for the Celtics, but we have no reason to predict that given the presently available information. Hypothetical future narratives about re-injury or Tatum-Brown beef are pure speculation, something that also does not exist in this dojo. This dojo is rational, and thus, for now, closed.
