BOSTON — TD Garden was a madhouse on Friday night. It was the most packed it’s been since the 2024 NBA Finals, filled to the brim with reporters, news anchors, and 19,156 Boston Celtics fans.
That’s because Jayson Tatum was back. He ruptured his Achilles tendon in the second round of the 2025 NBA Playoffs against the New York Knicks, but returned Friday night against the Dallas Mavericks.
After 298 days of rest, recovery, and hard work, the Celtics superstar took the floor for the first time in the 2025-26 season.
“I think there’s a sense of gratitude and a sense of perspective,” Joe Mazzulla said pre-game of Tatum’s return. “At the end of the day, you saw a guy at his most vulnerable state, and you’re seeing that journey back. And the journey may start today, but there’s no endgame to that. [It’ll be] a long time. And I think just along the way, you have to have a sense of gratitude, you have to have a sense of perspective, and then you also have a sense of, just have to get back to work.”
Tatum went through his pre-game routine, shoulder-bumping Derrick White before running out of the tunnel to a thunderous wave of applause from TD Garden. A wave that repeated itself a few more times throughout the night. Up until the very moment the game started, Tatum’s smile never faded.
The crowd erupted again when he was announced in the starting lineup, and when he touched the ball for the first time, there was yet another roar.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing. Tatum’s shot was way off to start the game. He air-balled one of his first shots and came up short on a monster dunk attempt that would have blown the roof off TD Garden.
In the meantime, a solid defensive showing from White, Payton Pritchard, and the deep-bench lineup kept Boston afloat. Baylor Scheierman and Hugo Gonzalez made all their usual hustle plays, and Luka Garza, in the wake of Nikola Vucevic‘s exit from the game with a finger fracture, gave Boston awesome minutes.
Garza’s hustle on the offensive glass was as impressive as usual, and he showed off his three-point shooting, too.
Jaylen Brown played a well-rounded game, hustling on the glass and dicing up the Mavericks’ defense with patience and precision.
Then, just before halftime, it happened.
White got a steal, Pritchard missed a three, and Tatum was right there. He soared up, grabbed the ball, and threw it down for a put-back slam. The crowd went nuts.
After a Cooper Flagg bucket on the other end, Tatum nailed a three, and the crowd went even crazier. An and-one from White on the next possession sent them into a full-on scream-fest.
That little surge brought Boston into the third quarter with a 58-53 lead, and once the second half began, Tatum took off.
Short shots turned into buckets. Failed drives turned into tough finishes at the rim. He was on fire. Tatum ended the third with seven points on 3-of-4 shooting, including a contested corner three that, once again, got the crowd amped up.
And just as the Mavericks were fighting their way back into the game with a barrage of Klay Thompson and Max Christie threes (combined 6-of-10 in the third), Brown was there to back Tatum up.
He dropped 12 points on 5-of-7 shooting in the third quarter, as Boston’s dynamic duo was back in full force.
Once the fourth quarter rolled around, the Celtics left the Mavericks in the dust.
Pritchard thrived in the scoring column, scoring nine points in the first half of the quarter, and Boston’s offense looked like a well-oiled machine.
When Tatum checked out for the final time at the 5:01 mark in the fourth, TD Garden gave him a well-deserved standing ovation. He finished the game with 15 points, 12 rebounds, and seven assists on 6-of-16 shooting from the field and 3-of-8 shooting from deep.
Brown ended the night with 24 points, seven rebounds, and seven assists, and White put up 20 points, four rebounds, four assists, three steals, and two blocks.
Neemias Queta scored 16 points and grabbed 15 rebounds.
