In Team USA’s first game of the 2024 Paris Olympics, Jayson Tatum was not in the rotation. The Boston Celtics star played zero minutes in the United States’ 110-84 win against Serbia on Sunday.
“I went with the combinations I felt would make sense,” coach Steve Kerr told reporters, via the Boston Globe’s Adam Himmelsbach, “and I talked to him, and he was incredibly professional.”
Kerr called Tatum “one of the best players in the world.” Tatum made the All-NBA First Team and led the Celtics to a championship this past season, and he logged an average of 17.6 minutes in the Team USA’s five exhibition games leading up to the Olympics. The biggest difference between those games and the Olympic opener, though, was that Kevin Durant didn’t play in the friendlies. Durant, who returned from a calf injury against Serbia, effectively took Tatum’s spot in the rotation.
“It’s really hard in a 40-minute game to play more than 10 guys,” Kerr said. “With Kevin coming back, I just went to the combinations that I felt made the most sense. It seems crazy. I thought I was crazy when I looked at everything and determined these are the lineups I wanted to get to.
“[Tatum will] make his mark. Our guys know the key to this whole thing is to put all the NBA stuff in the rearview mirror and just win six games. Jayson is the ultimate pro and champion and he handled it well, and he’s going to be ready for the next game.”
Kerr could have tinkered with the rotation in order to keep Tatum in it, but elected not to do so. The decision to bring Durant off the bench signaled that he wanted to keep the starting five — Stephen Curry, Jrue Holiday, Devin Booker, LeBron James and Joel Embiid — intact. Going smaller could be an option going forward, but wouldn’t have made much sense against Nikola Jokic’s team.
It is a bit weird that Tatum wound up not playing at all, no matter the context. It is worth noting, though, that Tyrese Haliburton, another All-NBA player, has not played since the first half of the United States’ tune-up game against South Sudan last week. For the last two-and-a-half games, Derrick White has run point with the second unit and Haliburton has sat on the sideline. If Kerr’s coaching staff is not going to play everybody in every game, then one or two great players will be left out.
“[Tatum is] good,” White, his teammate on the Celtics and with Team USA, said. “He’s in good spirits. He’s obviously a hell of a player and we’ve got a lot of great guys on the team, so he’ll be all right.”
Asked if he was sick, as both Embiid and Anthony Davis had to miss recent practices due to illness, Tatum said, “No, I’m good,” per the Boston Globe’s Gary Washburn.
Ahead of Team USA’s upcoming games against South Sudan (Wednesday, 3 p.m. ET) and Puerto Rico (next Sunday, 11:15 a.m. ET), the broader question about the rotation is how rigid Kerr will be. If Durant is inserted to the starting lineup, who is taken out? What ripple effects will that have on the bench? Kerr has not exclusively made hockey-style substitutions this summer, but he has clearly tried to construct a consistent first unit and a second unit so that the two respective groups could build chemistry. The simplest way to keep some continuity on Sunday was to put Durant in Tatum’s place, but that doesn’t mean the coaching staff would have landed on this particular rotation in any other circumstance.
For the next three days, Kerr can experiment with different lineup combinations in practice. Don’t be surprised if the substitution pattern looks meaningfully different against South Sudan, and don’t be surprised if this ends up being Tatum’s only DNP-CD.
