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 was Tatum. Coach Kerr had been told before the game that he planned 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 and made three key defensive plays.
With Kerr declaring Tatum available for the South Sudan game, a player who was in good form on Sunday could see reduced playing time or even no time 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.”
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Kerr’s decision to leave Tatum out of the lineup sparked widespread interest in the United States, with pundits and fans on social media bashing Kerr for not using a player with the track record and skill of Tatum, who not only had been selected to the All-NBA First Team for the third consecutive year and had just won an NBA championship, 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 while explaining his decision. A few hours later, in an interview with ESPN, Kerr said he felt stupid for not using someone as good as Tatum.
But there needs to be context, and Carr tried to provide, or at least allude to, that context in explaining his decision.
Tatum played in all five exhibition games, starting two of them, splitting time with Booker on the wing while Durant was out with a calf injury. He averaged 6.4 points while shooting 47 percent from the field and missing all six of his 3-point attempts.
The small forward position has always been a pressure point on the U.S. roster, and the U.S. has a ton of talent there, which is one of the reasons they brought Kawhi Leonard home. Sure, he wasn’t as quick as he was when his chronically injured knee wasn’t in top form, but the U.S. felt they had enough forwards but 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.
Of course, Kerr could cede White’s playing time to Tatum and rearrange the rotation to help fill White’s required role, but South Sudan played a guard-heavy lineup that put a lot of 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 when Kerr opened 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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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.
Kerr could swap Tatum for Booker or Durant, with Tatum starting in place of Booker or coming off the bench while Durant starts, or he could rest Durant as he recovers from a calf injury and go back to the rotation he used in exhibition games while Durant was out.
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.”
It’s a tough decision, but Kerr has to put Team USA’s best interests first. The USA experience, as Kerr puts it, isn’t “NBA bullshit,” which Kerr says this team won’t have. “It’s just about going out there, playing and winning,” he says.
“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)