It is not what the NBA wants you to think. And Jayson Tatum probably doesn’t want to think about it too much. It is not how athletes at their level process things. But Tatum was honest Tuesday, when he talked about having shortness of breath during games, more than a month after the positive test for COVID-19 that he doesn’t have the same energy as before sometimes.
Here’s what he said according to ESPN.com:
“I think it gets in the way of your breathing a little bit,” said Tatum after the team’s dress rehearsal on Tuesday afternoon, before receiving the Denver Nuggets. “I’ve already tried some games where, I don’t mean [I was] struggling to breathe, but, you know, you get tired a lot faster than normal.
“Just running up and down the court a few times makes it easier to get out of breath or get tired much faster. I realized that since I had COVID. It’s just something I’m working on.
“It has gotten better since the first game I played, but I still deal with it now and then.”
This does not mean that Tatum is not effective, because it certainly is.
Just last night he turned 21 in a big 112-99 victory over the Nuggets. But Tatum’s statistics have been low since his return. It may be only temporary, but the most frightening thing is that we don’t know. We know that COVID-19 can cause scarring of the lungs in the long run.
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Tatum could recover in time, he probably will. But then … can’t he? No one can be absolutely sure that he will be free from the effects that will come next month or next year. It is mainly a hope. It seems so, since he has to be one of the best people to be in the NBA. But the virus itself would not have cared much about it.
Even if it is just a slight shortness of breath, Tatum can and probably will have a great career. Maybe even one in the Hall of Fame. He has been one of the league’s biggest stars for the past two years, and still has one of the highest ceilings around. He has every chance of being one of the best Celtics of all time, which is not an easy thing to do.
But the thought at the back of everyone’s mind has to be: what if it is never the same? What if he never recovers the explosion that separates him from 98% of the league? Of course, he will still be a high-ranking player, which will make him very rich, very famous, and he could still bring the Celtics to glory at some point. He will hardly suffer.
But we don’t know if that will be all. And if Tatum’s career is restricted in any way, it would be a waste. Does he think it’s worth playing this season if he doesn’t fulfill the goals in his head simply because his lungs are marked by a virus that he didn’t need to catch? If he can’t be the guy the Cs turn to at the end of the playoff games, why can’t he get enough oxygen? If it is worse than that and your life is affected from now on? Or if your career is interrupted?
We still don’t know how many that will happen. The fear is that the number will be much higher than we are considering now. Just because Tatum was the most honest about it, it doesn’t mean he is the only one. When we find out, we will probably feel very different about this season. But no league ever worries about the consequences later, when money is available now.
Let’s move on to the other side of the sports spectrum. Whoever lets the Vegas Golden Knights think that these gold helmets are a good idea, needs to be defeated with a crocodile very quickly. Look at that shit:
They look like the movies Gladiator and Tron collided with each other on the interstate. There is simply no one on the planet who said, “Do you know what we need? More Notre Dame. ”Not even Fighting Irish and their most fervent fans think there needs to be more of that. We don’t even need the Notre Dame we currently have.
Fortunately, the Knights lost 3-2 in the last minute of the Avalanche regulation. Which is exactly what they deserve by skating with these lamps. The Chili Peppers tried that in Woodstock, idiots. See what they’ve become.
Let’s end with LeBron pulling up the logo … and flying. And CJ McCollum from Portland laughing about it a lot.