PARIS — U.S. national team coach Steve Kerr said Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum will “play” in Wednesday’s game against South Sudan, which is notable because the three-time NBA All-Star team missed the team’s win over Serbia for health reasons.
“I won’t answer the next question of who doesn’t play if he plays, but we’re going to need him and part of my job is to keep everybody involved and prepared, because in my experience, crazy things happen,” Kerr said Monday at the team hotel.
On Sunday, Team USA beat Serbia 110-84 in the Olympic opener for both teams, featuring Kevin Durant back from injury. Durant scored 23 points and made his first eight shots off the bench, but his inclusion in Kerr’s rotation meant the loss of a truly talented player.
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That player was Tatum, who was informed before the game against Serbia that Kerr was planning to start Devin Booker with Durant coming off the bench. Booker finished with 12 points, four 3-pointers and five assists. Derrick White, true to his role, came off the bench with three key defensive plays.
With Kerr declaring Tatum out for the South Sudan game, a player who played very well on Sunday will see reduced playing time or even none at all on Wednesday.
“The hardest part of the job is having to bench at least world-class players, some of the best players on the planet, and on the one hand, it just doesn’t make sense,” Kerr said. “On the other hand, I’m asking my players to just focus on winning one game and then move on to the next one, and I have to do the same thing. So last night, I felt that combination made the most sense.”
Kerr’s decision to leave Tatum out of the lineup sparked widespread interest in the United States, with critics and fans on social media bashing Kerr for not using a player with Tatum’s pedigree, who was not only a three-time All-NBA first team selection but was also the second-leading scorer on the gold medal-winning Tokyo Olympic team.
“I wondered if I was crazy,” Kerr said immediately after the game, explaining his decision. A few hours later, in a pre-scheduled on-camera interview with ESPN, Kerr said he “felt stupid” for not using a talent like Tatum.
But there needs to be context, and Carr tried to provide, or at least allude to, that context in explaining his decision.
Tatum took part in an exhibition warm-up (Giuseppe Cacace/AFP via Getty Images)
Tatum played in all five exhibition games, starting two of them. He shared time with Booker on the wing while Durant was out with a calf injury. Tatum averaged 6.4 points, shot 47% from the field, and missed all six of his three-point attempts. That position, small forward, was always going to be a pressure point on the USA roster, and the USA’s surplus of talented players was one of the reasons they sent Kawhi Leonard home. Sure, he couldn’t move as quickly as he did when his chronically injured knee wasn’t hurting, but the USA felt they had too many forwards and not enough defensive-minded guards.
One might wonder why White is getting playing time instead of Tatum, even though he wasn’t with Team USA when training camp began, but White and Tatum play different positions and do different things. White, at least while playing for the Olympic team, is a defensive specialist, playing on the second unit to stop the opposing point guard at the point of attack. White only scored two points in 16 minutes against Serbia, but he did have two big steals and a key block in a close first half.
White’s emergence won’t affect Tatum’s playing time, but it will affect the minutes that might be allocated to Tyrese Haliburton, who hasn’t played in the past two games since 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, cede White’s playing time to Tatum and rearrange the rotation to help fill White’s required role, but South Sudan’s guard-heavy lineup put all the pressure on the U.S. in a friendly in London. The U.S. trailed by as many as 16 points at the half and White was in the midst of a comeback with Kerr opening the second half with a strong defensive lineup.
“We need to be more prepared for what they’re going to do, how many 3-pointers they’re going to take, the speed of play,” Kerr said of South Sudan, specifically pointing to guard Carlik Jones, who has played in 12 NBA games over three seasons and recorded a triple-double with 15 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists in the last game against the United States.
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Kerr will likely play the “small” guy and be separated from one of the three big men, of which Joel Embiid seems to struggle with what’s most needed (for example, his stats are more extensive than Bam Adebayo’s, but Adebayo, like White, is primarily reliant on defense).
Embiid has averaged 9.7 points and 6.0 rebounds in six games for the U.S. national team this summer, including four points, two rebounds and three turnovers on 2-of-5 shooting from the field against Serbia.
“I think Joel struggled last night but it’s not a shock given he was unwell the last few days prior to that,” Kerr said. “He’s been doing really well prior to that and has been at his best in the last few friendlies so I’m looking forward to seeing him do well going forward.”
White was the only one of the Americans’ 12 players not to be selected as an NBA All-Star last season, but he was a key player on the Boston Celtics’ championship team and earned himself a $125 million contract extension.
In other words, whoever receives the payout when Tatum gets his chance will, quite frankly, be a player who probably doesn’t deserve it.
“The whole thing with this experience is we have six games,” Kerr said, “and each game is different. We’re going to need everybody, so it depends on who we’re playing, but we’ve got to go in ready to go and what it takes to win that game, that’s what we need.”
(Top photo: Garrett Elwood/NBAE via Getty Images)
