NBA Star Jayson Tatum Reveals Agony of His Injury For First Time — And How Sons Deuce and Dylan 'Kept My Spirits Up' (Exclusive) Eileen FinanSeptember 23, 2025 at 5:00 AM 0 Boston Celtics star forward Jayson Tatum suffered an Achilles tendon rupture in the final minutes of Game 4 of the NBA Eastern ...
- - NBA Star Jayson Tatum Reveals Agony of His Injury For First Time — And How Sons Deuce and Dylan 'Kept My Spirits Up' (Exclusive)
Eileen FinanSeptember 23, 2025 at 5:00 AM
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Boston Celtics star forward Jayson Tatum suffered an Achilles tendon rupture in the final minutes of Game 4 of the NBA Eastern conference semi-finals on May 12
Tatum, 27, says when the injury occured, his career "felt like it was all taken away... I broke down crying"
The NBA star's two sons, Deuce, 7, and Dylan, 14 months, have kept his spirits up as he recovers. He says he's "not ruling out" playing later this season
Lying on the couch at his mom's home outside Boston last spring, his right leg propped up in a splint, Jayson Tatum watched as his 7-year-old son Deuce replayed basketball highlights on his iPad.
Days earlier, the Boston Celtics' star forward was playing the final minutes of an NBA playoff game when he took a step forward and ended up sprawled on the court, writhing in pain with a ruptured Achilles tendon.
"Deuce," Tatum said to his son, pointing to the players he was watching on the tablet, "you think Daddy's going come back and be able to do that again?"
Elsa/Getty
Boston Celtic's star Jayson Tatum ruptured his right Achilles tendon during the NBA Playoffs on May 12
Deuce gave his dad a look as if to say, "Dumb question." "Of course," the boy told him. Says Tatum of his son's confidence: "I really needed that. There have been plenty of moments during this when I doubted myself. My son thinks I can do anything."
Brian Babineau/NBAE via Getty
Tatum with son Deuce, 7, in October 2024
Four and a half months after his injury ended his season, Tatum, 27, is determined to live up to his son's expectations — and to make sure the setback doesn't end his career. "It's been a long journey," Tatum tells PEOPLE in this week's issue, in his first interview since his injury. "I'm on the road to getting back. And it's the hardest I've ever worked in my life."
Tatum's unexpectedly rocky path began in May with what looked like a minor misstep during game four of the Eastern conference semifinals against the New York Knicks.
After passing the ball to a teammate, Tatum, who'd won the 2024 NBA championship with the Celtics and Olympic gold that same year, lunged forward — a move he says he's done "a thousand times" — and then collapsed in pain.
"It sounded like a gunshot. It was almost as if I had headphones on when I heard it. It was the loudest pop," Tatum recalls, adding that he still isn't able to watch a replay of the moment ("It's so triggering. It was a sad day."). When he fell to the ground, "I just kept saying, 'No, no, no way this just happened to me.' I'm turning on my butt, smacking the ground, 'cause I knew right away what just happened."
He was helped off the court and put in a wheelchair: "I broke down crying. I thought, 'Will I ever be the same?' At 27, I felt invincible. It all changed in a moment."
In the locker room surrounded by his trainer and his mom, Brandy Cole, Tatum was inconsolable: "I literally sat there and cried for two hours 'cause so many things ran through my mind: 'Damn, is my career over? Am I going to get traded? Are all my partners going to drop me?' My basketball career flashed in front of my eyes," he says. "I'm in my prime, one of the best basketball players in the world, and it felt like it was all taken away."
For a long time, an Achilles rupture signaled the end of a career for an elite athlete, says Tatum's orthopedic surgeon Dr. Martin O'Malley. It meant weeks in a full-leg cast, after which "there'd be so much atrophy in the leg, a player would never recover," O'Malley says.
But with advances in surgery and rehab, that's no longer the case, he says, citing Kevin Durant's comeback after his 2019 Achilles rupture. With hard work, O'Malley told Tatum, he could be "back to being Jayson Tatum."
Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty
Tatum lifting the NBA championship trophy after the Celtics beat the Dallas Mavericks in 2024
It took the NBA star time before he believed it. "As crazy as it sounds, I felt betrayed by the game of basketball," he says.
At first after surgery, his pain was so intense, he tried taking a prescribed opioid medication, but ended up "so naseuous" that he stopped after less than a day. O'Malley suggested a new non-opioid pain drug that was just approved by the FDA earlier this year, Journavx, which doesn't "dull your brain" and "there's no addicted potential." It allowed Tatum (who's since become a spokesperson for the drug's manufacturer, Vertex Pharmaceuticals) to quickly begin his intense rehab—three hours every day in physical therapy treatment and in the weight room.
During his recovery Tatum moved out of his home outside Boston and in with his mom, who lives just a few doors down the street from him, because she has a bedroom on the first floor. (The first floor bedroom in her son's house had been "turned into a golf simulator course," his mom explains with a laugh.) Cole says her son was "devastated" by the injury but she told him, "We're not going to talk negatively. We're going to get through this. It doesn't define you."
Despite the support from his mom, whom he calls his "best friend," Tatum had a tough time seeing a positive future in the days after the injury: "Those first two or three weeks, I wasn't sure I was up for this challenge of trying to come back, I was so upset."
His kids "helped my spirits" he says, adding that spending extra time with them this summer has been a "silver lining." Son Dylan, 14 months, whom he shares with British singer Ella Mai, was "fascinated" by the boot Tatum wore after surgery. "He always would make noises at and try to touch it when he saw it," Tatum says.
And although Tatum was sidelined from chasing the toddler, who has just learned to walk, the two cuddled and "Dylan got to nap a bunch on Daddy's chest on the couch," Cole says. They also set up a fenced-in play area outside, where Tatum could sit in a rocking chair nearby while Dylan played in his toy kitchen and pool.
Jayson Tatum/Instagram
Tatum spent Father's Day with sons Deuce, 7, and Dylan, 14 months, in the Bahamas
Meanwhile, Deuce, Tatum's son from a previous relationship, would try to help where he could: "He'd be like, 'Daddy, let me get the door' and was always making sure I was all right."
Deuce also offered some cheekier motivation. "Deuce didn't cut him any slack," says Cole. "When they were outside playing [basketball] he's like, 'I can beat you now!' We were like, 'Way to beat a man while he's down!' Jayson warned him, 'You got a couple of weeks.'"
Banter aside, "the kids didn't care if he was using crutches," Cole says. "They didn't see him any different. They're like, 'He's still Superman.' They still see him as this amazing giant figure who can do anything. I am certain that helped him."
O'Malley says that Tatum's progress has been impressive: "I don't think I've seen a person's calf look as strong as his. At six or eight weeks he was doing double heel rises. He worked his calf so hard that the side effect of loss of strength, I don't think he's going to have any."
Tatum admits it will be hard to watch the season start and not be on the court. "It's frustrating being in this situation, not being out there with my team and just having to sit there and watch it. I played in 96% of the games that I was able to play in my career. I don't sit out."
But, he says, he'll be with his team, however he can: "I'm going to be at practices and go to games and travel. As frustrating as it'll be to not be able to play, feeling like I'm a part of the team will help me out."
Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty
Jayson Tatum in June 2024
Tatum says he's laser focused on his goal of returning to the court—possibly, he says, before the end of the season: " I'm doing everything in my power to get back as healthy as I can, as fast as I can. Nobody's putting any pressure on me to come back at a certain point. But I'm also not ruling out that I'm not playing this season. The first most important thing is making a full recovery, being back 100% before I step on the floor, not compromising anything, I'm still only 27, I got a lot of basketball left. I'm not rushing it."
And, he says, he's determined to show his kids that he's working hard to get there: "What kind of a life lesson is that if I was like, 'This might be too much, I'll just call it quits'?" he says. "As a parent, you want your kids to be proud of you, I want them to look at me like, 'He showed me what it's like to fight through adversity. I want my kids to see that Dad didn't give up.'"
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NBA Star Jayson Tatum Reveals Agony of His Injury For First Time — And How Sons Deuce and Dylan 'Kept My Spirits Up' (Excl...
