Jayson Tatum Leaves With Injury Before Celtics Lose 121-113 in Game 4

NEW YORK — Jayson Tatum fell with a non-contact right leg injury as he pursued a loose ball following his pass that failed to connect with Jaylen Brown. OG Anunoby scooped it up in front of him before Tatum collapsed, writing in pain and immediately motioning for a timeout. The Celtics stumbled on the verge of a series defeat. But that mattered little compared to the potential franchise-altering development left behind in transition.

Tatum left the game unable to place any pressure on his right leg after Anunoby dunked the other way. The Celtics trailed 113-104 with three minutes remaining. ESPN showed Tatum leaving the floor in a wheelchair with his face in his hands. Boston fell behind 3-1 in the series, 121-113, but the health of the franchise cornerstone became the immediate concern before the Celtics face elimination on Wednesday in Boston. Joe Mazzulla provided no update on Tatum after the game, who remained in the training room post-game.

“It’s a lower-body injury,” Mazzulla said. “He’s gonna get an MRI tomorrow. He’s with the doctors now … I just got the update from him. I just asked him how he was doing. We’ll get the MRI tomorrow and we’ll see what it is. You’re always concerned about someone’s health.”

Tatum nailed seven threes on 16 tries in an aggressive performance that saw him hunting Knicks switches on his way to 42 points in 39 minutes. Another 50% three-point shooting half for the Celtics initially carried over into the third quarter, Tatum and Derrick White building Boston’s game-high 14 point lead three minutes into the second half with a pair of threes. Then, Jalen Brunson and Mikal Bridges scored on four straight possessions to slash that to five. Tatum and Brown briefly staved off the comeback with difficult twos before the Celtics missed six straight threes before the fourth as the Knicks tied the game.

The crowd, New York’s pace and dribble drives began overwhelming Boston late. Bridges thrived through renewed burst on his first step and brought defensive energy. Brunson closed with eight points in eight minutes and resembled his All-NBA self for a full game for the first time in the series. Anunoby and Karl-Anthony Towns slashed for six made baskets inside while the Celtics closed taking 12 threes and eight twos. Tatum kept battling, a pull-up three, an and-one through Anunoby, but even he faded, missing a tough pull-up two and launching a three far behind the line now trailing by five points.

The Celtics called timeout and returned Brown to the floor after he sat for nearly seven minutes with five fouls. Tatum hit him around a screen, Brown dropped the ball and Tatum lunged forward to recover it, pressed his right foot into the floor without touching anyone and tumbled to the floor. He reached for his right ankle, rolling around in the back court before motioning to the bench for a timeout. Al Horford secured one the other way as two trainers burst onto the floor from Boston’s bench. Payton Pritchard replaced him and tried to push back.

But the game was over. The series is almost certainly over. And now it’s worth wondering if this run is over.

“Everyone’s concerned with (Tatum),” Brown said. “But tonight, defensively, our defense let us down. Just no resistance.”

Summer questions already loomed for the group that resembled and at times surpassed last year’s championship squad in versatility, depth and offensive firepower. Pritchard and Luke Kornet more often provided starter-level contributions off the bench. Tatum ascended higher in the MVP conversation and Brown solidified his role as the team’s vocal leader. Joe Mazzulla embraced flexibility, playing every lineup combination imaginable while the Celtics still finished second in the east while prioritizing rest. Moments emerged that raised eyebrows, but January struggles in retrospect stemmed from bad shooting fortune in both directions while defensive lapses became blips on the radar. Pace, depth and ball movement issues showed late in the season.

Yet the Celtics won their first round series in five games despite not having the three-pointer available for all of it. They led by 20 points twice at TD Garden to open this series, on where the Knicks had few visible paths to competitiveness. Never mind wins. But both opponents put pressure on Brown and Tatum to beat them.

Health issues wore on the team more than they did last season, and allowing the Knicks to flip both games that the Celtics had won in Boston set the stage for having little room for error going forward. The New York offensive turnaround following all of the team’s worst performances on that end this season coming at the start of the series happened. The Celtics couldn’t survive it.

“Everybody is more concerned (with Tatum),” Brown said. “Obviously, the loss is huge, but we gotta get ready for Game 5. So we’ll take the night and pick our heads up tomorrow and put together a game plan to come out on our home floor to keep this series alive.”

Brown shot 7-for-16 with four turnovers in a stat line that didn’t begin to reflect the control he struggled to play with in the loss. The reemergence of Kristaps Porziņģis’ March illness symptoms rendering him as a tiny percentage of his normal self stands out as one of the strangest developments I can remember on an NBA team. Mazzulla still leaned toward playing him over Kornet on Monday. Pritchard logged only 20 minutes after his 35 allowed him to lead the Celtics in scoring through their Game 3 blowout win. New York discovered its own double-big lineup and dominated Boston on the boards on Monday. Boston spiraled.

Nobody looked like themselves except Tatum — until the sight of a player rarely knocked out of the game with an injury expressing devastation raised everyone’s concern level. Karl-Anthony Towns noticed immediately and approached Tatum on the floor as he departed. Knicks teammates and even the Madison Square Garden crowd applauded in support.

“I wanted to pray for him. It looked bad,” Towns said. “Prayers to him and his family. You never want to see anybody in the NBA get hurt like that. I hope it’s something minor and not something major. I’ve been in a situation like that with my calf. If you saw, I just walked up, obviously respectful of his space. I just put my head down and prayed to my mother, prayed to God to put protection over him and comfort, whatever the injury may be.”

Brown said the Celtics didn’t share many words post-game. Porziņģis sat still in his locker after the game. Pritchard briefly talked to two reporters and left. The room mostly sat empty otherwise. Sam Hauser, who missed a third straight game with his Game 1 ankle injury, sat outside the locker room on the floor staring ahead. Horford sharing some words with reporters with sadness growing over his face as he addressed the concern for Tatum.

“It’s very concerning just from the care that I have for him and what he means to us, what he means to Boston. It’s just very tough for us and more importantly very tough for him right now,” Horford said. “Let’s see what happens but it’s very tough for our group altogether.”

An achilles injury could cost Tatum upward of one year. The Celtics hoped to compete for a championship this season, then find a way to keep it going based off the result of the preceding year. One freak play as Game 4 concluded might’ve changed that entire future trajectory instantly. But with Game 5 on Wednesday, Mazzulla turned the focus back toward the details the Celtics will need to succeed to play without him and stay alive.

“Tonight, we just didn’t play well defensively,” Mazzulla said. “We’re in a hole and we gotta get back to Boston and we gotta figure out a way to win. Knicks played great tonight, we had stretches of playing well and they got the best of us, especially in the third quarter with their pace, their offensive execution and I thought their pressure took us out of a lot of our actions and took away our rhythm, and we have to fix that for next game.”

“They’ll be ready. That’s just who they are.”