The Boston Celtics are out of action for the near-term future as the NBA is on hold while the league works out how to proceed in the midst of a pandemic, but for All-Star forward Jayson Tatum, the break from action may not be such a bad thing.
While the social isolation players are maintaining will make it a challenge to keeping up on conditioning , for players like Tatum, it also represents a much-needed rest.
The Duke product has played a massive amount of minutes for a player his age (22), more than any other Celtic this season with 2,043. He’s played in 28 postseason games already in his career, and rarely misses regular season games.
So his trainer Drew Hanlen sees the value in some rest for the St. Louis native, but it also doesn’t mean a lack of training overall.
“Jayson’s played a ton of minutes this season, he’s been playing on both ends of the court, so his body needed a break anyway,” said Hanlen via the Boston Herald’s Mark Murphy.
“He’s taken a few weeks off and he’s like a lot of my other guys, waiting for a definite date so he can start to put together a plan to utilize this period and improve during this period. You also don’t want to ramp up too early to where you’re burned down if this thing goes longer than expected.”
Currently, the league hopes to restart the season in some form in mid-June or soon after, but with the Centers for Disease Control having already effectively doubled the initial 30-day suspension of league activities, it’s hard to say exactly when — or if — such a resumption will be possible.
“I think the benefits for a team like the Celtics are to get everybody healthy. Everybody hopefully will take care of their nagging injuries,”, noted Hanlen.
“The cons for a team like the Celtics is they were playing really good basketball, and had developed such good team chemistry that you almost have to restart it once the time period completes itself.”
That chemistry has indeed been a key factor in transforming the disaster of last season into the gem of this one.
While it might be a lot more likely to return after the break with high-character players on the roster with abundance, Boston has been using group texts to keep the tight-knit group together in the pandemic.
“We were all laughing saying that there’s never been a time more important for the group text message to be active to keep that team chemistry alive than now,” added Hanlen.
After seeing how the team has rallied around veteran guard Marcus Smart following his positive diagnosis for the coronavirus, it seems likely the bonds are as strong as ever.
And for this year’s Celtics, sticking together through such a stressful disaster may be every bit important as winning a banner, given the stakes.
