Achilles Specialist Pinpoints Key Mental Hurdle Celtics’ Jayson Tatum Must Overcome

Jayson Tatum has missed the opening months of the 2025-26 NBA season. The Boston Celtics’ four-time All-NBA forward is recovering from a torn Achilles tendon. He suffered the injury during Boston’s 2025 Eastern Conference Semifinals loss to the New York Knicks.

Tatum is expected to miss most, if not all, of the current season. However, recent workout videos have fans excited that his rehab and recovery could be ahead of schedule.

Recently, Bobby Krivitsky of Hardwood Houdini spoke with Dr. Stone, an Achilles specialist, about Tatum’s chances of returning to the court. Stone provided some encouraging information; however, it was his comments on the mental hurdle Tatum must overcome that stood out.

“There’s obviously the physical boxes: returning to your strength, returning to your jump height, returning to your flexibility,” Dr. Stone said. “But most importantly, there’s the mental return, meaning, can you get the fear of a rupture out of your head? And then, can you sprint and stop and launch and jump, and without that little nagging feeling that, ‘Oh, maybe I need to protect my Achilles.’ And usually, that does go away pretty soon once you’ve been out on the court, once you’ve been back in the game. But it’s still a little nagging fear in the back of the mind.”

There’s no doubt that Tatum has been putting in the work behind the scenes. His workout videos and the comments from the locker room both attest to that. However, across all the videos surfacing on social media, one thing has been missing: Tatum working through contact.

Granted, it’s still too early for Tatum to be taking bumps or finishing through combative defenders. Still, that mental hurdle of learning to trust his body will be difficult to overcome and could limit his effectiveness initially when back on the court. It will be interesting to see what footage comes out once he’s cleared for contact play and live scrimmages with NBA-level talent.

Tatum still has multiple checkpoints to clear before he’s ready to be re-inserted into the Celtics rotation. Even then, he will need time to adjust and learn that his body can withstand the rigors of playing in the NBA. It’s all a process. A process that could potentially keep Tatum sidelined until next season, and that might not be such a bad thing.