For much of the USA Men’s Basketball run to a gold medal at the Paris Olympics, any drama around the team was self-created.
The biggest drama was Jayson Tatum’s minutes — he didn’t play in the group play opener against Serbia (or the medal round game against them) and came off the bench against other teams, averaging 17.7 minutes a night (which was sixth on the team in the games he did play, the most of the non-starters). Celtics fans were riled up and angry with coach Steve Kerr — how could the best player on the NBA champions, a first-team All-NBA player be benched?
Tatum admitted that not playing was challenging, but he handled it better than Celtics fans and, in the end, he got the gold. Tatum talked about it with Jared Weiss of The Athletic.
“It was a lot. In the age of social media, you see everything,” Tatum said. “You see all the tweets and the people on the podcasts and people on TV giving their opinion on whether they thought it was a good decision or it was an outrageous decision or whatever. Obviously, I wanted to contribute more, and I’ve never been in (this) situation…
“I wasn’t moping around. I didn’t have an attitude. I wasn’t angry at the world,” Tatum said. “I stayed ready and did what was asked of me and I won a gold medal, right?”
Tatum also owned up to one key reason he did not play as much: His shot was off. This started during the playoffs, when Tatum shot 28.3% from 3 (down from 37.6% in the regular season). At the Paris Olympics, Tatum shot 38.1% overall and was 0-of-4 from 3, he just did not have his shot going. Kerr needed buckets and leaned into fellow Celtics like Jrue Holiday and Derrick White, among others, because their shots were falling, and they also provided versatile defense.
Tatum now has two gold medals — Tokyo and Paris — and an NBA championship, plus he is on the cover of NBA 2K25. His career could not be going much better, and he’s not stressing about the past. Instead, the focus is on repeating as champs in Boston
“I’m of the mindset that after ring night, in a weird way, we got to put that behind (us),” he said. “Last year was last year. We did it. It was a dream come true. We worked our ass off for it. But after ring night, we gotta move on. We gotta get ready for game two.”
Kerr and Team USA added some motivation for himself and Jaylen Brown, the Celtics star duo have a chip on their shoulder again. That could spell trouble for the rest of the league.
Tatum isn’t
stressing about the past anymore. It’s all about the future now.