Jayson Tatum is seven games into his return from Achilles surgery, and the consensus is largely disbelief that he looks as good as he does. The eye test tells us that Tatum looks very much like himself, even though it’s clear that he’s missing some of his burst. This is, after all, an extension of his rehab and not the finished product. So it's good to take the occasional look at how he's doing to set a baseline against which we can judge his progress later on.
The basic stats aren’t bad. He’s averaging 19.6 points per game, with 8.6 rebounds, and 3.4 assists. Obviously, he’s been on a minutes restriction, so if we level everything off using the Per-36 stats, he’s at 23.8 points, 10.4 rebounds, and 4.2 assists. Last season’s Per-36 was 26.5/8.5/5.9, and his career Per-36 averages are 24.6/7.7/4.0.
So right away we can see the scoring is down, and that's obviously because he’s shooting 39%, about 6% below last season and 7% below his career average. He’s only shooting 29.4% from three, which is 7.5% below his career averages.
That's to be expected. He’s finding his way back into a groove, and that's going to take some time. Some games, like his 24 points on 68% true shooting against Golden State, will look great. Others, like his 13 points on 37% true shooting against Memphis, will not.
At least he’s rebounding and defending to make up for it.
A closer look at his shot chart gives us a little glimpse of how things are going. Let’s start with last year’s:
Jayson Tatum 2024-25 shot chart
NBA.com
Pretty standard Tatum shot chart. He takes a lot of above the break threes, he rarely ventures into the corners, he’ll take a fair amount of mid-range shots, but he’s mostly attacking the rim if he’s not launching from deep.
Here’s this season’s so far:
Jayson Tatum 2025-26 shot chart
NBA.com
Obviously, a seven-game sample is very small, so there's still time for things to even out a bit. However, right now, he’s very clearly favoring the left side of the floor. It's an interesting quirk with no real answer yet. Is that a function of the offense? His teammates? The injury? Dumb luck? It’s hard to say right now. It’s easy to make a guess and say maybe he doesn't fully trust making that first step with his right foot, but driving left requires him to launch off the right leg, so that might not fully be it.
Tatum hasn’t shied away from driving. Last season he drove 10.7 times per game in 36 minutes played. According to Synergy Sports, he’s driving 23.6% of the time, right on par with the 23.3% from last season. But he’s averaging 0.714 points per possession on his drives, where last year he was at 1.028 PPP. For reference, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who scores 14 points per game off drives, is averaging 1.180 PPP.
Here are the breakdowns, according to Synergy Sports:
DRIVES ('24-25) FREQUENCY POINTS PER POSSESSION
OVERALL 1.028
LEFT 55.8% 1.058
RIGHT 42.2% .976
STRAIGHT 2% 1.300
DRIVES ('25-'26) FREQUENCY POINTS PER POSSESSION
OVERALL .714
LEFT 74.3% .692
RIGHT 22.9% .875
Tatum has only one drive straight this season, and is 0-1.
His scoring on drives is down, but again, the sample is small. Also, we have to take free throws into account, and Tatum isn’t getting fouled nearly as much right now. A lot of his drives in prior years got him to the line (though some Celtics fans would argue not often enough). His foul rate on drives this season is 8.6%, way down from the 14.7% from last season.
It’d be easy to argue that the lack of explosion is taking away from the force of his drives, and that's leading to less contact. He might also be looking to avoid contact a little more right now rather than play through people, which would be understandable considering he’s probably still working through some mental hurdles.
This shows up in his isolation numbers as well. According to Synergy, he was scoring .982 PPP in isolation, putting him in the 73rd percentile. He has isolated 33 times so far this season, scoring just .606 PPP.
A lot of this is circumstantial evidence. We can rightfully look at a lot of this and dismiss it because of the small sample. Sometimes we see what we want to see in statistics when we’re trying to prove our points. But there's one stat that hammers it home for me, and makes me believe all the circumstantial evidence shows Tatum is still working to find his overall burst.
Last season, he averaged .956 PPP as the pick-and-roll ball handler. This year, he’s averaging .950. It’s a slight dip because his jumper isn’t falling, but we’re not seeing the noticeable dips when he’s getting a screen versus other areas. To me, that tells me that when he’s getting the benefit of a screen, he’s able to free himself up more easily and score.
None of this is surprising, and certainly none of it is concerning, either. I’ve been more than pleased by what Tatum has shown so far. We’re getting a better version of Tatum than I could have expected in this situation. However, it’s clear that Tatum still has a fair amount of work to get to the best version of himself.