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Jayson Tatum explains injury scare after Celtics' Game 1 win over Magic

Zack Cox, Boston Herald on

Published in Basketball

BOSTON — Jayson Tatum avoided injury Sunday during his tumble on the TD Garden parquet.

The Celtics star landed on his wrist after a hard foul from Magic guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in Game 1 of the teams’ first-round playoff series. He remained down on the court for an extended period and was briefly examined on the Boston bench, but he remained in the game, which the Celtics went on to win 103-86.

Tatum said an X-ray on his wrist came back “clean” and “good.” He downplayed the scare during his postgame news conference.

“It’s all right,” Tatum said. “I just fell on it, landed on it. … It was throbbing for a second then kind of went away.”

Caldwell-Pope, who grabbed Tatum’s right elbow while the latter was elevating for a dunk, was assessed a Flagrant 1 foul on the play. Players from both teams exchanged words while Tatum was wincing on the floor.

 

“Hard foul,” Celtics guard Jrue Holiday said. “I mean, playoff basketball, (Orlando is a) 7 seed that’s gonna come out and fight and be physical. Just a hard foul.”

Tatum endured a rough shooting night (8 for 22 from the field, 1 for 8 from 3-point range, 0 for 4 from the foul line) but was highly active on the glass, leading all players with 14 rebounds to go along with his 17 points, four assists, one steal and one block. The Celtics outscored the Magic by a game-best 23 points during his 40 minutes.

“Obviously, he probably didn’t play the efficient offensive game that he would have liked, but I thought his poise, you couldn’t tell that,” Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla said. “That never got in the way of his defense and his physicality and his rebounding. That’s the most important thing. He’s going to score, he’s going to put us in position to be successful, but you’ve got to answer the call defensively, physicality-wise. I thought he did that, especially rebounding in the second half.”

The Celtics will look to take a 2-0 series lead Wednesday night at TD Garden.


©2025 The Boston Herald. Visit at bostonherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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