BOSTON -- Brad Stevens has a message for Jayson Tatum if the injured Boston Celtics star truly wonders whether he would still fit in on the team he led to the 2024 NBA championship.
"Obviously, any team with Jayson Tatum's going to be better," Stevens said Friday. "If he needs it, I'll tell him every day. Because every team -- all 30 of us -- would be way, way better with him on the team."
Tatum led Boston to its 18th title and had it on track for a repeat last spring before he tore his Achilles tendon in the Eastern Conference semifinals against the New York Knicks. The Celtics seemed headed for a rebuilding year when they traded key contributors Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis over the summer to avoid the punitive second apron of the league's luxury tax.
But they hit this week's trade deadline tied for the East's second seed, with the possibility that a late-season return by Tatum could ignite another long playoff run. Asked about that scenario last week, Tatum wondered whether he might upset the team's chemistry by returning.
"That's something I contemplate every day," he said on "The Pivot" podcast. "They would have played 50-some odd games without me. So they have an identity this year, or things they've felt that have clicked for them, and it's been successful.
"So there's a thought in my head that is, like: 'How does that work? How does that look with me integrating myself off an injury.' And it is a thought, like, 'Damn, do I come back, or should I wait?'"
Stevens said that he hadn't heard the podcast but that, from his conversations with the six-time All-Star, he hasn't seen anything other than the usual doubts from a rehabbing player about whether he would be able to get back to the same level.
"Those are just things that go through everybody's minds," Stevens said, chuckling at the thought the team would be better off without Tatum. "In all of our conversations, he's confident he can make the team better, too."
For now, Tatum still has "a ways to go," and the team isn't going to rush him, Stevens said.
"He's hit a lot of the thresholds, he's doing more and more and will continue to do more and more," the former Celtics coach and current president of basketball operations said. "There's no pressure from us. But there's also not going to be any of us saying, 'Well, why don't you just take another week?' It's going to be: When he's ready, he's ready."
Despite Tatum's absence and the offseason salary dump, the Celtics (33-18) won four straight games heading into Thursday's trade deadline, when Stevens further lowered the payroll by trading Anfernee Simons to Chicago for Nikola Vucevic and then unloading Josh Minott, Xavier Tillman and Chris Boucher to move below the luxury tax threshold itself.
Originally a first-round draft pick by the 76ers, Vucevic made his NBA playoff debut when the Celtics of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen ousted Philadelphia in the 2011 Eastern Conference semifinals. But the 35-year-old Montenegrin has been to the playoffs only three more times in a 15-year career and has never won a postseason series.
"It's something that I think every player wants to get a chance to do, and make deep runs," Vucevic told reporters Friday. "Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to do that in my career. So I'm excited to be here, be around a championship team, a lot of the players that have done it before and the coaching staff as well, and the Celtics throughout their history."
Stevens said swapping 6-foot-3 Simons for 6-9 Vucevic gives the team depth at big man at the cost of a position where they remain relatively deep. The possibility of Tatum's return didn't play a part in his thinking, Stevens said.
"It's best for Jayson to come when he's 110% healthy, he's fully cleared by everybody that matters in that decision, and he's got great peace of mind and ready to do it," Stevens said. "That's it. That's the objective, and that's what we're going to stick with."