-
Tim BontempsESPN
Boston Celtics striker Jayson Tatum said on Tuesday night that he was still facing the side effects of contracting for COVID-19 three months ago and that he used a pre-game inhaler as a means to combat them.
“Almost,” he said, after scoring 32 points, along with nine rebounds and five assists, in a 116-115 victory over Boston in Portland when asked if he had returned to 100%. “Very close.
“It’s a process. It takes a long time. I’ve been taking an inhaler before the game, since I gave positive results. This kind of helped me and opened my lungs, and, you know, I’ve never taken an inhaler before. So it’s something different.
“I definitely feel better now than I did a month ago.”
He added that he was not sure how long he would have to use the inhaler, saying it would take until he felt good enough to play without it.
“There is no exact timetable,” Tatum said. “[It’s] just when I feel comfortable enough and I don’t think I need it. “
Tatum’s strong performance on Tuesday night – including the 8.5-second 3-point hit to the end – was his most recent in a series that coincided with Boston’s best stretch of the season. Portland’s win has been Boston’s sixth in seven games, and the Celtics have a 3-0 lead on the West Coast swing if they can beat their Los Angeles Lakers forever at the Staples Center on Thursday night. .
In his last 10 games, Tatum has averaged 29.4 points while shooting just under 50% of the field and just under 40% of the 3-point gap – including the best 53 points of his career in the Boston overtime win of the Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday night.
Perhaps some of this may be related to Tatum’s continued progress since the impact of COVID-19, which several of his teammates have had to go through in recent months. Tatum pointed out that after the game, to explain, in part, the disappointing season of Boston so far.
“I don’t think our record shows what kind of team we are,” Tatum said. “I think even though it was a weird year, obviously we did some, sorry, a lot of things obviously. Things, a lot of guys gave positive results, some guys were hurt. But you know now for the most part, we miss Evan [Fournier]. But most boys are healthy. I just like the way we play. Every game is important right now and we know it’s approaching in a way.
“Obviously, we want to win. But I think we, we play the right way and we feel good about ourselves. We won’t win every game, but I think we play the right way and we’re definitely the trend in the right direction.”
However, Celtics coach Brad Stevens sees his young star doing the same thing he did at the same point last season, when he took off in the weeks leading up to the Chicago All-Star Game and never looked back.
“It’s about the time, the number of games, in which it started to take off last year,” Stevens said. “And you can see that in the last few weeks. You can see that he is in a rhythm of knowing what he wants to do in a certain possession and also where his opportunities will come from. And again, it helps when they have all four guys there, because then you can’t upload it like maybe earlier in the year, sometimes. “
Boston needed that brilliance in each of the last three games, in which Tatum scored over 100 points in total and reached the free throw line 34 times. And after finally gaining some momentum, the Celtics hope to continue.
“We are not happy, we are not satisfied, we are not satisfied with that,” said Marcus Smart. “It’s a start, the beginning of what we know we have to do. We dug a hole. We know we have to keep fighting, but it’s encouraging. We use this as an impetus to continue and continue the next game and try to we bring the same energy with these victories to the next game. And this is really our spirit. We are not too big at maximum levels and we are not too small at minimum.