Boston Celtics
“You’re about to go scrap and one of your best scrappers ain’t here. That’s a blow to the morale in here.”
Kevin Garnett was “shocked” to see Jayson Tatum ruled out for Game 7 vs. the Sixers. AP Photo/Matt Krohn
Despite Jayson Tatum appearing to tweak something in his leg during the Celtics’ Game 6 loss to the Sixers last week, both he and the team didn’t appear to signal any concerns about his availability before a decisive Game 7 on May 2.
“Y’all probably saw when I went to the back,” Tatum said after Game 6. “So, I was on the bike. My leg was just a little stiff when I came out in the third quarter. But just kind of assessing the moment, like, the game was a little out of reach. We took the starters out.”
“I mean, he said he was playing right?” Joe Mazzulla said of Tatum the following day. “He’ll play.”
But, after Boston submitted a clean injury report on Friday, Tatum was deemed “questionable” on Saturday afternoon with “left knee stiffness” — roughly six hours before tip-off at TD Garden. Ahead of the game, Tatum was ruled out, with Boston ultimately falling to Philly, 109-100, in a season-ending defeat.
Speaking on the latest episode of the “KG Certified” podcast with fellow Celtics great Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett admitted that he was “shocked” to see Tatum ruled out from what turned out to be Boston’s final game of the year.
“I can tell you now that if the C’s thought I was playing and I came in 30 minutes before and said I didn’t play, that would [expletive] shatter the locker room,” Garnett said. “I’m just talking about now as professionals, they gotta adjust, like, ‘Okay, who’s next?’ You’re about to go scrap and one of your best scrappers ain’t here. That’s a blow to the morale in here. That’s a blow to the camaraderie. I was shocked.”
“When I saw that, the first two minutes of that game, I watched the bench,” Garnett added. “I watched morale. I just wanted to see how they were going to react to that emotion. Was it going to uplift them? I think they did the best they could with the best they had. They left it out there. Philly was just the better team.”
Despite Garnett’s comments, Tatum was actually ruled out well ahead of tip-off, with the final injury report dropping two hours before the start of the game. Even if Tatum’s availability wasn’t exactly in doubt in Boston’s locker room right before warmups, his absence was felt against the Sixers.
Despite the frustrations rooted in a first-round exit where Boston initially held a 3-1 series lead against Philly, Pierce pushed back against some of Garnett’s frustrations — noting that playing Tatum in that game wasn’t worth the risk, especially coming off a ruptured Achilles tendon last May.
“They made a long-term decision,” Pierce said of Boston’s decision to sit Tatum. “We’ve seen it happen too many times. … We’ve seen it happen with too many guys who dealt with calf pain or knee [pain]. … That’s what they’re doing.”
Speaking to reporters last week, Tatum said that the Celtics made the call to sit Tatum out, noting that he felt as though he could have continued to play had Boston punched its ticket to the next round of the playoffs.
“Experienced some tightness back there,” Tatum said of his knee. “It was just unfortunate timing but it was, I guess, a little bit to be expected. I was away for ten-and-a-half months and then I’m back and I’m playing every other day.”
“I’m playing 36-40 minutes, so it’s not unusual that something would come up. It was just kind of tough because rehab was going so well the entire time. I guess it was kind of inevitable that I would have to deal with something and it just came at the worst time.”
Conor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023.
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