Jayson Tatum is working his way back from the ruptured Achilles he suffered in May.

He’s hoping his recovery timeline will look something like Dru Smith’s.

Smith, a reserve guard for the Miami Heat, tore his Achilles on Dec. 23 of last year and was back on the court for training camp in late September. His layoff lasted roughly nine months, far shorter than the time it took players like Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson to return from their respective Achilles surgeries.

A nine-month comeback for Tatum, who has been training daily at the Celtics’ practice facility and recently began playing 1-on-1 with assistant coaches, would put him back in a Boston uniform around the NBA All-Star break in mid-February. The perennial All-NBA selection has made clear he hopes to return at some point this season.

Before the Heat visited Boston on Friday night at TD Garden, Smith reflected on what he described as an arduous rehab process.

“I mean, it’s slow,” he said. “It’s tough. It’s boring some days. But it’s just a process. You’ve got to take it day by day and just see how your body’s responding.”

Though the road back to game action was shorter for Smith than it was for other players who have sustained the same injury, he believes not rushing the early stages of his recovery helped expedite his progress.

“I was able to get back fast,” the 27-year-old said, “but it was really probably because of the patience on the front end. We took everything really slowly. We walked slowly, ran slowly, probably were behind on a lot of those early milestones just to make sure that everything was safe, and then you can kind of ramp up from there.”

Smith, who also tore his ACL two years earlier, admitted thoughts of “Why me?” crept into his mind as he began his rehab last winter. Some of those returned in the spring when he saw superstars Tatum, Damian Lillard and Tyrese Haliburton all go down with Achilles injuries in the same NBA postseason.

“Honestly, it just got harder and harder to watch more guys go down,” Smith said. “Just thinking back to those first couple of months — at that point, I was a few months in, so I was walking and that kind of stuff, but it just kind of took me right back to that moment where it’s all kind of taken away and you have to figure out what’s next. It was definitely tough, and it’s just a tough rehab, so you just felt for anybody who was about to have to go through it.”

Tatum currently is in the strength-building phase of his rehab, according to Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens. The team will not reactivate him until he is “110% healthy,” Stevens said earlier this week, but neither Tatum nor the team has ruled out a midseason return.

“He’s obviously made great strides,” Stevens said. “Right now, we’re still focused on the full-strength game.”

Smith described that portion of his recovery as, again, “slow.”

“I don’t think there’s any one line of demarcation for what it is for everybody,” he said. “I think it’s just a process, and as you go through the testing and all the different things like that, it just takes time. And that’s what sucks about it. There’s no way around it. It’s just a lot of volume calf work and boring stuff that you feel like you’re not really getting much done, but that’s just what you have to do.”

That tedious work allowed Smith to rejoin the Heat in time for training camp, defying the expectations of head coach Erik Spoelstra and his staff. He battled more “negative thoughts” in his first few games back as he rebuilt his confidence, but before long, he felt like himself again.

Smith has played in every game for Miami this season, averaging 17.2 minutes, 6.2 points, 2.9 assists, 2.6 rebounds and 1.5 steals per appearance.

“His resilience is incredible,” Spoelstra said.

Thomas honored

Former Celtics point guard Isaiah Thomas was a guest of honor Friday night at TD Garden.

As part of its “Legendary Moments” series, the team celebrated one of the best performances of Thomas’ Boston tenure: his 52-point explosion against Miami on Dec. 30, 2016.

It was the highest-scoring regular-season game of Thomas’ career, topped only by his 53-point effort against Washington in the 2017 playoffs. The man nicknamed “The King of the Fourth” scored 29 of his 52 points in the final quarter to propel the Celtics to a 117-114 win over the Heat.

Thomas’ time in Boston ended unceremoniously — with a hip injury in the 2017 Eastern Conference finals, followed by an offseason trade to Cleveland that netted the Celtics Kyrie Irving — and he became an NBA journeyman after his departure, appearing in games for eight different franchises and three G League teams. But he played a vital role in reviving the franchise following the breakup of the Pierce-Garnett-Allen Big Three and bridging the gap to Tatum and Jaylen Brown’s prime.

Last month, The Sports Museum presented Thomas with its Basketball Legacy Award at “The Tradition” awards ceremony.