Jayson Tatum’s mom was not happy with Magic after flagrant foul on her son
"You want me to go to the Orlando locker room?"
Jayson Tatum’s mother — as well as the collective Celtics fan base — were not too happy with the Magic on Sunday after Tatum suffered an injury scare during Boston’s Game 1 win over Orlando.
Boston’s convincing 103-86 win was nearly undercut by Tatum suffering a serious injury, with the All-NBA forward favoring his right wrist with 8:28 left in the fourth quarter.
While driving to the basket and going up for a dink, Tatum was fouled by Magic guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who knocked him off balance and caused him to land awkwardly.
Tatum stayed on the hardwood for a few minutes while grimacing in pain, with Caldwell-Pope eventually assessed a Flagrant 1 foul for the infraction.
Following the win, Tatum made his way off the court and toward the X-ray room at TD Garden, with cameras catching Tatum’s mother — Brandy Cole — speaking to him as he went in for the imaging.
“You want me to go to the Orlando locker room?” she asked Tatum.
Tatum shook his head no as he made his way into the X-ray room, with the Celtics forward later telling reporters that the results from the imaging were “clean”.
It wasn’t the best shooting performance from Tatum on Sunday, as he sank just eight of his 22 field-goal attempts for 17 points — including just a 1-for-8 performance from 3-point range.
Still, Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla wasn’t concerned with Tatum’s performance on the offensive side of the ball.
“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,” 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.”
Despite the risk of a serious injury and his mother’s clear displeasure with Caldwell-Pope’s foul, Tatum didn’t feed into any discourse about more bad blood brewing in this first-round series between the Celtics and Magic.
“I mean, playoff basketball. It was a lot of fun out there,” Tatum said. “It felt good to be back in the playoffs, kind of playing a game like that in this environment. It was fun.”
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