Bypassing roster relief hints Boston hasn’t ruled out a late-season return for superstar
On Wednesday, Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens met with the media after their practice at the Auerbach Center in Brighton, MA, where he was asked about the potential of Jayson Tatum returning to the court at some point during the 2025-26 season.
And to the surprise of those who have not been paying attention to his rehab progress/process, Stevens left the door wide open for his superstar.
“One of the things that everybody can see is we didn’t apply for a [displayed player exception] this year, which was a conscious decision for a lot of reasons,” said Stevens. “But the reality is, he’s not going to be back until he’s 110% healthy and he feels good about it, and that’s a big part of it.”
“So you’re saaaaaaaaayin’ there’s a chance???”
A displayed player exception, or DPE, is granted to teams when an NBA-designated physician determines that a player is “substantially more likely than not” to be sidelined through June 15 of next season.
In the case of Tatum - if the Celtics (15-11) had filed for the DPE, it would have allowed them to sign a replacement player up to the non-taxpayer mid-level exception at roughly $14 million. It appears Stevens and the rest of the organization have done a cost benefit analysis on that trade off, and have determined that the potential of a Tatum return is worth more to them than any potential mid-level exception-type player coming aboard.
In a perfect world, Tatum returns to this team sitting as one of the top four seeds in the Eastern Conference, and they go on a run through a wide open Eastern Conference.
But as we all know, it’s never that simple.
Stevens detailed multiple steps Tatum is going to need to take in the coming weeks for this to be a true possibility.
“There’s a strength threshold he has to meet,” said Stevens. “And then after that, several weeks of progressions from the standpoint of scripted against small groups, scripted against bigger groups, scripted in 5-on-5, unscripted random. All the way up through those.
“But it’s a long progression, and it’s almost like - once you hit the strength, then you do your thresholds of a progression of play, and then you’re also reconditioning to play real minutes. Whatever that looks like. He’s obviously made great strides. Right now, we’re still focused on the full-strength band.”
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Stevens made it clear that while his superstar wants back out there, he also knows he can’t just rush into this thing because of a lack of patience.
“Obviously, he’s itching to play,” said Stevens. “Obviously, he hates watching. But he’s also very cognizant of the need to meet every threshold and why there are those things that are put in place. We’ve had a lot of great talks about it.
“One of the things that we love about this whole group - and I think the guys that have been here the longest lead the charge - is they love to play.”
Wednesday was the second of three straight nights off after their loss to the Pistons on Monday night.
Boston is back on the court for the first night of a double-header on Friday, with tip-off against the Heat set for 7:00 p.m. ET.
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Tom Carroll is a contributor for Roundtable, with boots-on-the-ground coverage of all things Boston sports. He's a senior digital content producer for WEEI.com, and a native of Lincoln, RI.