When Jayson Tatum collapsed to the court at Madison Square Garden on May 12, so did the latest iteration of the Celtics’ promising contention window.
As Tatum sought treatment in New York City ahead of an eventual surgical procedure the following day, Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens felt as though a long-awaited (and dreaded) inflection point had finally arrived.
With Boston’s best player likely sidelined for the entire 2025-26 season due to a ruptured Achilles tendon, Stevens knew that the Celtics — as constituted in May — were going to look very different in the coming weeks.