PARIS – Team USA coach Steve Kerr said Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum “will play” Wednesday against South Sudan, notable because the three-time first-team All-NBA star was a healthy scratch in the Americans’ win over Serbia.
“I’m not going to answer your next question, which is if he plays, who doesn’t, but we’re going to need him and part of this job for me is to keep everybody engaged and ready because my experience with this is crazy stuff happens,” Kerr said Monday at the team hotel.
Team USA dumped Serbia 110-84 in the Olympic opener for both teams Sunday in a game that brought the return of Kevin Durant from injury. Durant scored 23 points and made his first eight shots coming off the bench, but his addition to Kerr’s rotation meant one really, really good player was going to drop out.
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That turned out to be Tatum, who was notified before the game that Kerr intended to start Devin Booker and bring Durant off the bench. Booker, by the way, scored 12 points on four 3s with five assists. Derrick White came off the bench with three important defensive plays, as per his role.
With Kerr’s declaration that Tatum will be on the court against South Sudan, it could mean someone who played well Sunday is either going to play less, or not at all on Wednesday.
“The hardest part of this job is you’re sitting at least a couple of guys who are world-class, some of the very best players on Earth, and on the one hand it makes no sense at all,” Kerr said. “On the other, I’m asking these guys to just commit to winning one game and then move on to the next one. I have to do the same thing. And so I felt like last night those were the combinations that made the most sense.”
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Kerr’s exclusion of Tatum from the lineup sparked great interest in America, where pundits and fans on social media roasted Kerr for not playing a player with Tatum’s achievements and skill. Not only has he been selected a first-team All-NBA performer for three consecutive years and is coming off an NBA championship, but also Tatum was the second-leading scorer on the Tokyo Olympic team that won gold.
Immediately after the game, while explaining his decision, Kerr said, “I thought I was crazy.” In an on-camera interview with ESPN hours later, Kerr said, “I felt like an idiot” for not playing someone of Tatum’s caliber.
But there is context needed, something Kerr has tried to provide or at least hint at when explaining his decision.
Tatum featured in the exhibition warmups (Giuseppe Cacace / AFP via Getty Images)
Tatum appeared in all five exhibition games with two starts, splitting time with Booker on the wing while Durant was out with a calf injury. Tatum averaged 6.4 points, shot 47 percent from the field and missed all six of his 3s.
The small forward spot was always going to be a pressure point on the USA roster, and the glut of talent the Americans have there is one reason they sent Kawhi Leonard home. No, he wasn’t moving quite as fast as he does when his chronically injured knee isn’t acting up, but Team USA also felt it had plenty of forwards and not enough defensive-minded guards.
So, for those wondering why White is getting minutes instead of Tatum, even though White was not on Team USA when training camp began – White and Tatum play different positions and do different things. White is a defensive specialist, at least while playing on the Olympic team, and he is playing with the second unit to stop the opponent’s point guard at the point of attack. White scored just two points in 16 minutes against Serbia, but had two huge steals and a key block in the first half while the game was close.
White’s emergence doesn’t affect Tatum’s playing time, but rather the minutes that may have gone to Tyrese Haliburton. Haliburton has not played in the last two games, dating to the exhibition season, and saw his minutes cut in half in White’s first two games with Team USA, in Abu Dhabi.
Kerr could, of course, give White’s minutes to Tatum and rework the rotation to cover for what White is asked to do, but South Sudan plays a guard-heavy lineup that put great pressure on the Americans in a friendly while in London. The U.S. trailed that game by as many as 16 points in the first half, and White was in the middle of the comeback, starting the second half as Kerr sought to open the half with a strong defensive lineup.
“We have to be better prepared for what they’re going to do, the number of 3s they’re going to take, the speed with which they play,” Kerr said of South Sudan, citing specifically Carlik Jones, who has played 12 NBA games over three seasons and produced a triple-double with 15 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists against the Americans last time.
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Of the Americans’ 12 players, only White wasn’t an NBA All-Star last season. But he was a key player on the Boston Celtics’ championship team and was awarded a $125 million contract extension.
Kerr could decide to swap Tatum for Booker, or Durant. Tatum could start in Booker’s place or come off the bench while Durant starts. Or, they could rest Durant, who is coming off that calf strain, and go back to the rotation used during the exhibition campaign while Durant was out.
Kerr could, one supposes, play “smaller” and go away from one of his three big men. Of the three, Joel Embiid would seem to be struggling the most with what is being asked of him (his statistics are more plentiful than Bam Adebayo’s, for instance, but Adebayo, like White, is largely being counted on for defense.)
In six games this summer with Team USA, Embiid is averaging 9.7 points and 6.0 rebounds. He contributed four points on 2-of-5 shooting with two rebounds and three turnovers against Serbia.
“I think Joel struggled last night, but it wasn’t a shock given that he had been sick the previous couple of days,” Kerr said. “He was really coming before that, his last couple of games of the friendlies were his best and so I feel good about him going forward.”
It’s a tough call, one Kerr must make with the best interest of Team USA at heart. As Kerr said, the USA experience isn’t supposed to be about “NBA B-S,” which he said there wasn’t much of on this team. “It’s just go out and play and win,” he said.
“The whole thing with this experience is it’s six games,” Kerr said. “Each game’s different. We’re going to need everybody. And so matchups will determine at times who we play, but we need everybody ready to roll and whatever it takes to win that game, that’s what we need to do.”
(Top photo: Garrett Ellwood / NBAE via Getty Images)