BOSTON — Jayson Tatum will not play in Game 2 of a first-round series against the Orlando Magic on Wednesday night, according to the Boston Celtics.
Joe Mazzulla said during his pregame press conference that Tatum will be considered “day to day” with a bone bruise in his right (shooting) wrist moving forward. Tatum suffered the injury during a hard fall with 8:28 left in the fourth quarter of Boston’s 103-86 Game 1 win. Al Horford believed Kentavious Caldwell-Pope’s flagrant foul on the play had something extra on it, but Jrue Holiday thought the play was just a regular hard foul.
Tatum participated in part of Tuesday’s practice with the team and was able to do some on-court work on Wednesday before Game 2, but the team ruled him out shortly before tip-off.
“I know he’s doing everything he can to put himself in position to play,” said Mazzulla. “He’s just going to try to take it day by day.”
Tatum had never missed a playoff game in his career. Before Wednesday, he had played in each of the Celtics’ 114 playoff games since the organization drafted him in 2017.
Without Tatum, the Celtics went 8-2 during the regular season. Both of the losses were to the Magic, but little can be taken from the second of those games because Boston sat all of its starters that night.
Jamahl Mosley said the Celtics have other players to step up in Tatum’s absence.
“He’s such an unbelievable scoring threat,” Mosley said. “Obviously, they have other guys to pick up the slack there. Usually in those games, it’s Al Horford who gets the (starting) nod. And so then there’s size, there’s rebounding, there’s switchability that Tatum still possesses, but just his veteran presence on the court changes the game for them as well. So we’ve seen that before but the ability is that the other guys pick up the slack even more so in that case.”
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