NEW YORK — Jaylen Brown stared out at a room full of reporters, all of us waiting for him to explain the inexplicable. Stared through us.
It was a thousand-yard stare — one that stretched from the podium at Madison Square Garden out past the training table in the funereal visitor’s locker room. Maybe all the way back to the fall of 2017, when Brown first lined up next to a rookie named Jayson Tatum, forming a partnership that would come to define the NBA’s premier franchise for the better part of the decade.
That partnership would bring the Celtics their elusive 18th NBA championship, and would put them in position to continue to compete for titles for years to come. Sometimes, though, even the best-laid plans can be derailed by one false step.
“It’s tough,” Brown said after the Knicks’ 121-113 win in Game 4 of the 2025 Eastern Conference semifinals on Monday night. “There’s not really a lot to say.”
In terms of the communication of new information, that, strictly speaking, was true.
Trainers help the Boston Celtics’ Jayson Tatum off the court during Game 4 in the Eastern Conference semifinals against the New York Knicks on Monday in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
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Brown hadn’t yet spoken to Tatum since his longtime running buddy left the court with just over three minutes to go in the fourth quarter of Game 4, after Tatum had hit the floor, on fire, following a non-contact injury that, for the second time in less than a month, left basketball observers all over the world fearing the absolute worst. Nor had his Celtics teammates or head coach Joe Mazzulla, who could only offer bare minimum details shortly after the final buzzer.
“I know it’s a lower body injury,” Mazzulla said. “He’s going to get an MRI tomorrow. He’s with the doctors now. … Obviously, always concerned about someone’s health.”
The cause for concern came late in the fourth quarter, with the Celtics trying to stem the tide of a New York run that had put the hosts up seven with just over three minutes to go.
Tatum — a brilliant player in the midst of a brilliant night, 42 points with eight rebounds, four assists, four steals and two blocks, a pristine two-way performance — surveyed the floor from the elbow, guarded by OG Anunoby. He passed to Brown, curling off a pindown from Boston guard Derrick White. But Brown didn’t control the pass cleanly, and it squirted free, in the direction of Tatum and Anunoby: a 50-50 ball, up for grabs, at a pivotal juncture of the game.
Tatum lunged to vie for the loose ball, planting his right foot on the ground and pushing off to try to beat Anunoby to the punch. He never got out of the starting blocks; instead, he crumpled to the ground, almost immediately reaching for the back of his right ankle.
“I thought he just rolled his ankle,” said Knicks star Jalen Brunson, who opened his news conference extending his thoughts and prayers to Tatum. “Obviously, we want to go out there and compete, but when a player of his caliber goes down and he’s rolling in pain like that, you know something’s wrong … you just never want to see something like that, ever.”
As the Garden rose in exultation to celebrate Anunoby’s fast-break dunk to push New York’s lead to nine with 3:03 remaining, Tatum stayed down, writhing in pain, spinning in circles on the court. Celtics training staff had to carry Tatum off the floor, with the six-time All-Star putting no weight on his right leg; he needed a wheelchair to get through the tunnels beneath MSG and back to the Boston locker room.
“The fact that he had to be carried off … he’s the type of guy that gets right up,” Mazzulla said. “So, he didn’t. We’ll know tomorrow exactly what it is. It’s tough to watch a guy like him get carried off like that.”
Tatum didn’t return to the court in Game 4. The question now hanging over this series — and, more significantly, the future of both Tatum and the Celtics franchise — is just how long it might be until he returns to the court again.
“We didn’t say much,” Brown said. “I felt like we just … there wasn’t a lot to say.”
Three minutes of game time after Tatum’s exit, the Celtics found themselves down 3-1 in this best-of-seven series — one loss away from the end of their bid to repeat as NBA champions and, with the potential for major changes to their ultra-expensive roster looming this offseason, possibly one loss away from the end of this era in Celtics basketball. It’s the kind of existential moment that can sharpen an entire organization’s focus to a fine point. So soon after Tatum had gone down, though, it seemed insane, if not impossible, to dwell too much on defensive rebounding adjustments.
“I mean, the loss is the loss,” venerable Celtics veteran Al Horford said in the locker room. “More importantly, you know, it’s Jayson that I’m worried about. And just making sure that I’m there for him. That’s my priority. … It’s very concerning, just from, you know, the care that I have for him. What he means to us. What he means to Boston.”
“That’s our brother, and you hate to see him go down,” added White, who scored 23 points on 6-of-11 3-point shooting in 43 minutes. “You know what kind of guy he is, and it’s tough to see him go down. Obviously, right now … it’s pretty low.”
From a cold-blooded, practical perspective, it’s not outside the realm of possibility the Celtics could stave off elimination back in Boston on Wednesday even if Tatum’s unavailable. All told, Boston is 9-2 without Tatum this season and beat the Orlando Magic in Game 2 of the opening round with Tatum sidelined by a wrist injury, with Brown scoring 36 points to lead the way.
“I mean, that’s the thing: We have the talent,” said big man Kristaps Porziņġis, who scored seven points with four rebounds in 24 minutes as he continues to battle through illness. “We have a lot of talent, even with JT out, even with me maybe playing 10 minutes, 15 minutes. We have the guys. We’ve shown in the past that we can [still play] really good basketball.”
In the playoffs, though, Tatum has been Boston’s bellwether. He leads the Celtics in minutes, points, rebounds, assists and steals in this postseason. He’s on pace to be just the fourth player ever to average more than 25 points, 10 rebounds, five assists and 1.5 steals per game during a postseason run, joining Larry Bird, Charles Barkley and LeBron James.
Through seven playoff games, the C’s have outscored Orlando and New York by 12.4 points per 100 possessions with him on the court and have been outscored with him off it. Against the Knicks, a Boston offense that finally got unstuck in Game 3 and the first half of Game 4 has stumbled with him on the bench, scoring just 105.3 points-per-100 — a rate that would’ve finished dead last in the NBA during the regular season.
“Obviously, like, there’s no replacement for this guy, though,” Porziņġis added. “Like, this is a big hit for us, 100%.”
That hit, combined with Brunson and Co. putting their backs against the wall, is an awfully brutal one-two punch for the Celtics to shake off — a mammoth emotional mountain to climb between the wee hours of Tuesday morning and Wednesday’s 7 p.m. ET tipoff.
“Yeah, no question about it — it’s an uphill battle,” Horford said. “But for our group, we have to turn that page quickly and do our first job, which is to win on Wednesday. That’s the mindset. And as a group, we just have to, you know, rally. Rally together. Because obviously, we’ve lost our leader and the guy that gets us going.”
The only way to carry a weight as heavy as what’s hanging over the Celtics’ heads right now is to share the burden.
“I mean, they’ll be ready,” Mazzulla said. “That’s just who they are. It’s been that way. It’s the locker room that we have, and they’ll be ready. You trust the character of the guys in moments like this, and you take it one game at a time.”
You do it because, well, you have no choice.
“Obviously, we all felt for him in that moment, but we just have to keep going,” Porziņġis said. “We have to keep playing. Obviously, we all realize in our heads what this could mean. But again, this is part of the sport, and it’s tough, and it’s hard to see, and hard to accept the truth. But it is what it is, and we have to go with what we have now.”
What Boston still has might be enough to extend this series — might even be enough to push it to a Game 7. If Tatum’s injury is as bad as it seemed, though, it’ll take some time for the Celtics to get their arms around just how titanic, how franchise-shifting a moment we all witnessed Monday. Brown, understandably, wasn’t quite ready for that yet.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ve got no words right now. I guess you just take it as it comes. Tomorrow we’ll know more, we’ll find out more. We’ve still got basketball to play.”
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