Boston Celtics fans were pleased to have Jayson Tatum back in full action. After 298 days of waiting through rehab and endless questions about his return, the superstar forward is back in the mix.

The 28-year-old forward made a return on Friday night at TD Garden as Boston saw off a 120-100 win over the Dallas Mavericks. Tatum checked in and shook off the almost year-long rust with 15 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists, a near triple-double in just 27 minutes.

The Eastern Conference just got a whole lot scarier for everyone else, but the uncomfortable truth nobody in Boston wants to say out loud is that this return might not have come at the perfect time for Jaylen Brown. 

His MVP-caliber breakout could well be the beginning of the end. 

Brown, of course, is delighted to have Tatum back as they chase the final run, but it will be back to being a duo for the Celtics and not Brown’s team, which it has been all season.

This season was the first real season for Brown without Tatum anchoring the offense after he tore his Achilles in last year’s playoffs against the New York Knicks. Everyone thought he would be put for all of the 2025-26 season. However, his timeline moved up, and he came back just in time to regain his sharpness for the postseason. 

But the only reason there is a postseason for the Celtics is because of Brown. 

The franchise lost Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis in the offseason. It didn’t look promising, but Brown took control with his two-way game and is averaging a career-high 28.8 points, 7.2 rebounds, and 5.1 assists on 48.1% shooting across 56 games. He is sixth in the NBA in scoring and leads the league in field-goal attempts at over 22.1 per night. More impressively, his usage rate has exploded to 36.4%, a career high and second in the entire league. 

Tatum’s Return is the Downside of Brown’s MVP Year

Brown has always been underrated for most of his career and seen as a second fiddle. 

The narrative painted him as the perfect co-star, elite defender, explosive scorer, but always playing in Tatum’s shadow. At some point, when Boston was still cracking ways to win a ring, many suggested the team let go of Brown to find a good complement to its superstar forward. But in its 2024 title run, Brown showed his value by winning the Eastern Conference Finals and NBA Finals MVP. 

He has been indispensable, albeit from the background, and this season, when he moved to the spotlight as a leading man, he stepped up and became an MVP candidate with an outside chance of winning as well. 

However, there is only one true alpha in Boston, and it’s Tatum. 

He owns the franchise record for single-season scoring average at 30.1 points per game back in 2022-23, a mark no Celtic — not even Larry Bird, Mr. Three MVPs in a row himself — has touched. He is the guy who commands double-teams, dictates offensive flow, and has been the undisputed centerpiece since his third year. This means Brown’s offensive load will be reduced, so too his output. 

Head coach Joe Mazulla will take his time to incorporate Tatum into the starting lineup. As his minutes ramp up, the ball will find him more, and Brown’s high usage rate this season will dip. 

His scoring will drop to around an average of 22-24 points or lower, which is the harsh reality when two high-usage wings share one basketball floor. Brown himself hinted at the adjustment after the win on Friday; he talked about the upcoming stretch testing their “patience” and “humility.” 

Nineteen games is still a lot of time for Boston to smooth things out before the playoffs. 

Tatum, on a minutes restriction, will slowly reclaim his role and boost his group’s chances of a deep postseason run. However, that will come at the cost of Brown’s MVP push in what has been his best-ever year.