rewrite this content and keep HTML tags
Two simple words followed by an ear-to-ear smile as Tatum walked the halls of TD Garden headed to the Celtics locker room. That grin lasted well into joining Jaylen Brown in pre-game warmups, a tradition the two have done since they become the cornerstones of the franchise.
With Deuce back on the sidelines, a raucous home crowd welcomed him out of the tunnel in his first game back after two hundred ninety-eight days of recovery and rehabilitation on not just the road to re-build his Achilles, but regain his confidence.
It wasn’t perfect to start. He missed his first six shots — including a loud missed dunk attacking a closeout — but connected on two alley-oop passes to Neemias Queta and found Sam Hauser, Jaylen Brown, and Derrick White behind the arc.
In a pair of six-minute stints, his legs looked heavy. There was a slight tentativeness with contact around the rim. With collective anticipation in the air, Tatum, the team, and TD Garden hung with every missed shot.
Then, a putback dunk off a Payton Pritchard miss gave the Celtics the lead again. He followed his first points of the season by a patented sidestep three and the top blew off the Garden.
That’s all it seemingly took as Tatum took over in the second half. He worked off the dribble at the top of the arc — the triple threat 6’8 point forward working back into perennial MVP candidate form. Absorbing contact on a drive and finishing off the glass? Check. The mid-range fall-away? Still got it. A jab step triple in the corner? Swish.
Starter or second unit, primary playmaker or second side swingman, Tatum naturally looked rusty, but it’s clear he kept his tools sharp over the last nine months. In a game that saw the prodigal son of Maine, Cooper Flag, return to New England and Nic Vucevic fracture his ring finger, the obvious headline of the night was Tatum’s return to the parquet.
It wasn’t about the numbers. However, a near triple-double of 15 points, 12 rebounds, and 7 assists only shows how a complete a player that Boston has been missing all year.
Celtics 120, Mavericks 100 with Jayson Tatum the big winner of the night.
