No NBA athlete wants to rupture their Achilles tendon. But Jayson Tatum is in a much better position than most to fully recover from this traumatic injury.
That’s because the 27-year-old Celtics superstar, who ruptured his Achilles in the fourth quarter of Monday’s Game 4 against the Knicks in New York City, underwent a successful surgery at the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) just hours after the injury occurred. According to multiple sources, the surgery was performed by one of the world’s leading Achilles tendon surgeons, Dr. Martin O’Malley, who also operated on Kevin Durant and Tiger Woods after they ruptured their Achilles.
To better understand this injury, CelticsBlog spoke with Dr. Lou Soslowsky, the founding director of the Penn Achilles Tendinopathy Center of Research Translation, an NIH-funded center created to specifically research Achilles tendon injuries and develop new treatments.
In addition to being a renowned expert in this field, Dr. Soslowsky also has first-hand experience with this injury — he tore his own Achilles tendon playing volleyball and returned to play just 7 months later.
And, he finds the fact that Jayson Tatum is 27 years old and able to get his Achilles repaired the morning after the injury to be hugely encouraging — and pretty unprecedented.
Jayson Tatum was able to get his Achilles repaired at lightning speed
The number one thing that Dr. Soslowsky finds most encouraging about Tatum’s situation is that he was able to get operated on so quickly.
“That is really atypical — even for a professional athlete or a high-profile individual — that is atypical,” Soslowsky said. “So that is really wonderful.”
You might expect all NBA players to have endless resources at their disposal, and therefore be able to get an Achilles rupture repaired on a 12-hour turnaround. But, that’s not typically the case.
For context, Damian Lillard ruptured his Achilles on April 27 and underwent surgery on May 2nd. DeMarcus Cousins tore his on a Saturday night and had the surgery on Wednesday. Wesley Mathews tore his Achilles on a Thursday, and had the surgery six days later. Rudy Gay also had to wait five days.
Even Kevin Durant, who often serves as the poster child for what a successful recovery can look like, tore his Achilles on a Monday night and had the surgery performed on Wednesday.
Though these were all high-profile NBA players, it always takes time to put everything together to make the surgery possible, Soslowsky explained.
“Fifty percent of their time, they’re not in their home city, and the choice of which surgeon you’re going to have perform that operation is a conversation between the athlete, the agent, maybe the team, ownership, maybe colleagues or friends of the athlete,” he said. “And once those conversations happen, those conversations take a little bit of time. They don’t happen within the first half hour, right? They begin then, and then, once you settle on the surgeon, depending on what city that surgeon is in, it’s often not in the city that you’re in. So, there’s some time involved there. And then that surgeon may have a clinic day that day, and they may not have an operating day until the next day or two days later.”
Almost miraculously, Tatum just so happened to already be in New York City, where the Celtics faced the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. And, Dr. O’Malley was available.
That reality, coupled with the fact that Tatum is so young — most NBA players who have suffered this injury have been at least 30 years old — puts him in uncharted territory. It also means that the somewhat discouraging data that currently exists regarding players’ decline upon return from an Achilles rupture might not necessarily be applicable in Tatum’s case.
“There’s not a lot of data on recovery from Achilles tear for a 27-year-old at 12 hours post-tear, right?” said Dr. Soslowsky. “There’s no data, really, out there.”
Surgeons universally recommend operative Achilles tendon repair as soon as possible to restore functionality and reduce the risk of re-rupture. But, regular people have to wait days, if not weeks, to go through all the hoops and hurdles of getting a surgery on the books.
“You’re going to get infiltration of biologic agents and cells that will create the beginnings of scar formation,” Soslowsky said. “Because this repair was within a day, those processes had only just begun, and with a surgical pair, the torn ends were put right back together before a lot of these adverse biologic effects occurred. And so the opportunity for a faster recovery really is present.”
Still, Dr. Soslowsky doesn’t think that the Celtics will rush Tatum’s return
Dr. Soslowsky said that the return to injury spans from anywhere between 7 months to a year and a half, and it’s nearly impossible at this point to determine which of those scenarios is most realistic. In a few months, Tatum and the Celtics will be able to assess where he’s at in his recovery and determine whether he’s in a position to make a push to return next season.
“At some point in some months, we’ll get a much better idea of whether they’re going to try and get back next season or not,” he said. “If you want to be conservative, one would say, well, it’s probably a 12-month rehab anyway. Therefore, let’s let him sit out and give him the best shot during the following season. On the other hand, if in a handful of months he’s doing well, then there’ll be the push and pull to say, we can get him back next season.”
ESPN’s Marc Spears reported that Jayson Tatum’s father, Justin Tatum, expects his son to return to the floor in 8-9 months — which means there’s hope he would be available to lace up in February. But the Celtics offered no official recovery.
“I think the likelihood of coming back next season is pretty low, honestly,” Soslowsky said. “But in some ways that might be just as well, because we have seen when people do come back early, there certainly is a risk of relapsing. That would be catastrophic, that would be awful. And so that’s not something that one would want to risk. On the other hand, we’ll know in a few months how he’s progressing.”
Even after Tatum’s Achilles is fully recovered, he’ll have to undergo a substantial ramp-up period before he’s able to return to NBA basketball.
“One of the difficulties of Achilles tendon tear is that it’s difficult to remain to keep your cardiovascular levels high with an Achilles injury,” Soslowsky said. “Because you’re not running, you’re not riding a bike, you’re not doing anything for many months, and so even after the tear is healed, there’ll be some time before he’s ready to play at the level that he’s capable of playing.”
But, in many ways, Tatum is in a pretty unprecedented situation. And the way things played out in the aftermath of the rupture could prove highly beneficial.
“The fact that he did choose a surgeon — and there was availability to operate on him so quickly — gives him an excellent shot at an earlier-than-average, high-level athlete return.”
