Boston Celtics
Tatum is clearly a little further along in his recovery than anyone expected, which is bad news for the Eastern Conference.
Celtics forward Jayson Tatum drives to the basket beside Cleveland Cavaliers center Evan Mobley in the second half of an NBA basketball game in Cleveland, Sunday, March 8, 2026. AP Photo/David Richard
Jaylen Brown led the way as Jayson Tatum continued to ramp back up, and the Celtics pulled away for a 109-98 win over the Cavaliers.
Here are the takeaways.
Jayson Tatum looks great — but he’s not fully healthy
Tatum started the game spectacularly — 12 points in the first quarter, and an eight-minute stint that wouldn’t have looked out of place in last year’s rotation before his injury. When he sat back down, it was hard not to think a little too far ahead — is Tatum just back now? What does that mean for a Celtics team that has excelled in his absence? How quickly can everything come together? What does this mean for Jaylen Brown?
When Tatum returned, the picture clarified a bit. He struggled offensively and looked a little gassed, which was entirely appropriate for a player who made his season debut fewer than 48 hours previously. He missed his next seven shots (and one free throw) before he got himself back on track — closing the game with a tough drive and a dagger 3-pointer after Payton Pritchard broke a hyper-aggressive Cavaliers trap. He finished with 20 points on 6-for-16 shooting to go with three rebounds and two assists in 27 minutes.
Tatum is clearly a little further along in his recovery than anyone expected, which is bad news for the Eastern Conference, and he still has well over a month to figure out what actions he can expect his body to perform on a basketball floor this year prior to the playoffs. Joe Mazzulla, meanwhile, still has more than a month to figure out how he can best use a hampered superstar.
That work in progress is monumentally important, because as good as Tatum has looked — and as cool as it has been as a viewer to see a player come back from an Achilles tear this quickly — he is still unquestionably hampered. He doesn’t have his speed, and he has struggled to create separation. Re-acquiring that last 10ish percent of his physical prowess is the difference between “useful contributor” and “All-NBA first team.”
But the fact remains that Tatum is a useful contributor now. He’s incredibly skilled with a remarkable basketball IQ. He can still get his shoulder into an opponent and drive them backward as he thunders to the hoop. He can still make open shots. He can still pile up rebounds. He can still defend. He’s still enormous — listed at 6-foot-8, but clearly much taller.
For now, Boston probably shouldn’t use Tatum as the primary attacker when Jaylen Brown goes to the bench, especially when they have Payton Pritchard and Derrick White who are more than capable of running the team, but Sunday’s 20-point performance was a reminder that even if Tatum is just another arrow in Mazzulla’s quiver for the next few months, he’s still really sharp.
The Celtics need to account for Jaylen Brown’s growth
On Friday, the game was all about Tatum, which was — of course — how it should be. His return was one of the biggest stories in the league, and the success of his return against a mediocre Western Conference opponent was a massive moment.
On Sunday, the Celtics needed to get back down to business against a high-level Eastern Conference rival, and to do that, they needed a big game from Jaylen Brown.
Brown delivered, scoring 23 points including 12 big ones in the second half as the Celtics staved off the Cavaliers multiple times. Brown got to his spot repeatedly, punished overmatched Cavs defenders (including Keon Ellis, who is very good but also much too skinny to take on a player of Brown’s stature), and flirted with a triple-double by tallying nine rebounds and eight assists.
As the Celtics work Tatum back into the lineup, they need to make sure they leave room for Brown’s growth.
The expectation here is that while the transition won’t be seamless, it will go smoothly. Tatum has made it clear that he is impressed with how the team did in his absence, and he has shown himself capable of contributing in an ancillary role for the time being, which allows for a natural growth back into his fully realized self.
But Brown has shown himself fully capable of carrying the team in the interim, and while the “Who is the Celtics’ 1A superstar?” debate has always been very overwrought, the answer for the time being is unambiguous.
The Cavaliers started cold (and the Celtics’ defense was elite)
We should note two things about the second quarter.
First, the Cavaliers missed a ton of shots — at one point, they were 1-for-their-last-20 and 1-for-18 overall from 3-point range as the Celtics took a double-digit lead. The Celtics shot 3-for-13 during that stretch, which kept the Cavaliers alive, but the ABC broadcast noted that often a 1 p.m. start comes with strange statlines. The Cavs scored 10 points in the quarter and spent a lot of the rest of the game trying to play catch up.
The second thing we should note is that the Celtics played a major role in the Cavaliers’ struggles. Their defense forced several late-shot-clock possessions and a number of contested 3-pointers that were shot more with a hope and a prayer than with rhythm.
Shaquille O’Neal, it seems, has not heard of Baylor Scheierman
During the Inside the NBA halftime show, O’Neal said, “I don’t even know who this kid is” as part of a highlight involving Scheierman.
In the second half, Scheierman showed why Shaq should have been paying attention. He buried three of his four triples in the final 24 minutes, finishing with an efficient 16-point, 10-rebound double-double in 26 minutes while matching up with the likes of Harden and Donovan Mitchell repeatedly.
Tatum’s return is the best kind of complication for the Celtics, because players like Scheierman have been excellent, and finding minutes for him will require a deft touch and some creativity by Mazzulla.
Kenny Atkinson thinks Derrick White is a top-five player
Prior to Sunday’s game, Atkinson said he thinks White is one of the five best players in the NBA.
That is, clearly, a bold claim — especially about a player who shares a roster with Tatum and Brown. Atkinson may have been doing some amount of gamesmanship, but he also clearly (like the rest of the NBA) holds White in very high regard.
Mazzulla, predictably, gave a thoughtful answer when he was asked about it postgame, noting that White’s style of play is “not commercialized.”
“At the end of the day, D-White is a connector,” Mazzulla told reporters. “I think one of the hardest things to do in the NBA is learn how to have complete confidence and also be a connector and make other people around you better, and I think he does both of [those things]. We have a bunch of guys on our team like that.”
While we might not have access to all of White’s advanced analytics, we do know he has one of the highest on/off totals in the NBA (+11.2, according to Cleaning the Glass’s adjusted metrics), and we know he has been one of the NBA’s best defenders (among the league’s starters, only Rudy Gobert has a better defensive on/off total) while also running the Celtics’ offense.
So while most of us might not rank White alongside the likes of Nikola Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, an NBA head coach might be more inclined to think highly of White’s style of play.
This rotation looks like a real contender to come out of the East
The Celtics’ starters weren’t even particularly good out of the gate, but the potential of a starting lineup featuring Brown, Tatum, White, Sam Hauser and Neemias Queta is incredibly high.
We covered Brown and Tatum. White, apparently, is one of the best players in the league. Hauser obviously offers gravity, but he was also marooned on James Harden several times and guarded the superstar credibly. Tatum and Queta have already shown excellent chemistry, and Queta’s job defensively should be simplified by Tatum’s return (although to his credit, Scheierman has been no slouch in the starting lineup either).
The second unit, meanwhile, is nearly as deadly. A playoff rotation generally doesn’t go more than seven or eight deep, and if you add Payton Pritchard (who, incidentally, scored 18 points and was part of the second unit that dominated the Cavaliers defensively) and Luka Garza (or Nikola Vucevic, if he’s healthy) as a back-up to Queta, they are already at seven, which leaves a battle for eighth between Scheierman and Hugo González (can someone ask Shaq if he has heard of one of the NBA’s plus/minus kings?).
Tatum’s health matters, but even before it was clear he could contribute, this team looked razor sharp. Now, it’s difficult not to wonder what this team’s ceiling really could be deep into May, and even (dare we say it?) into June.
What’s next
The Celtics will keep their road trip going with a brutal (and perhaps very telling) stretch, facing the Spurs on Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. and the Thunder on Thursday at 9:30. They return home Saturday to take on the Wizards.
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