Following the Boston Celtics’ shootaround on Monday, star forward Jayson Tatum told reporters that he may need surgery on his troublesome left wrist, which has been causing issues for him ever since he suffered a non-displaced fracture last season.
“Maybe [it will require surgery],” Tatum said. “I don’t want to say yes and I don’t want to say no. It’s something we’ve got to look at once the season’s over. But nothing that’s gonna cause me to miss significant time the rest of the season.”
Tatum, who sat out of the team’s win over the Toronto Raptors on Saturday, will be back in the lineup on Monday night against the Orlando Magic, as the Celtics look to extend their winning streak to 10 games. Despite his wrist injury, Tatum has been a workhorse for the Celtics this season, missing just three games and averaging 37.1 minutes, the third-highest mark in the league.
His insistence on playing as many games and as many minutes as possible — he was on the court for 48 of the 53 minutes in the Celtics’ overtime win over the Golden State Warriors last week — is a big part of why he’s become a leading contender for the MVP award, and why the Celtics have the best record in the league at 35-12. He’s putting up 31.2 points, 8.5 rebounds and 4.8 assists per game, and the team is plus-9.4 points per 100 possessions when he’s on the floor.
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If it was up to Tatum, he would never sit out, but he said conversations with the medical staff convinced him to sit out against Toronto.
“It’s kind of just talking with Nick [Sang, one of the Celtics’ athletic trainers] about how my body was feeling,” Tatum said. “Those 50 minutes the other night didn’t necessarily help, and a couple of falls on my wrist, but I think the extra day off helped me out a lot.”
For Tatum’s sake, and the Celtics’, more nights off over the second half of the season might be a good idea. He admitted last summer that he was “exhausted” during the Finals, when the Celtics lost to the Warriors in six games. Though he has more help around him this season, he’s playing even more than he did last season, and the Celtics figure to have another deep playoff run ahead of them.
