Kerr’s disgraceful treatment of Tatum continues to defy logic

Kerr’s disgraceful treatment of Tatum continues to defy logic originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

There’s only one conclusion to draw from Team USA’s narrow escape against Serbia on Thursday: Steve Kerr is an idiot.

Hey, that’s his word, not mine. Barely two weeks ago, Kerr inexplicably sat Jayson Tatum the first time the two teams met at the Paris Olympics and then told ESPN that he “felt like an idiot” for not playing him. When history repeated itself on Thursday with Tatum glumly planted on the bench, it called to mind the famous aphorism: “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, you’re an idiot.”

I have no idea why Kerr is effing with the best player on the best team in the NBA, but I’m here for whatever devastation the Revenge Tour wreaks across the Bay Area next season.

It seemed like Finals MVP Jaylen Brown would be leading that charge after USA basketball stubbornly bypassed him twice for the roster. But that was before Kerr decided to humiliate Tatum on a world stage, most egregiously in a must-win game that appeared headed for disaster until the incomparable Steph Curry conjured his magic.

What Kerr is doing to Tatum can’t simply be about basketball. It feels like a shot at the Celtics, as if Kerr believes his team’s 2022 title over the not-quite-ready-for-primetime C’s should supersede the wrecking ball Tatum and Co. just took to the rest of the NBA while raising the franchise’s record 18th banner. They’re threats to win Nos. 19 and 20 in short order, thus challenging Kerr’s Warriors for modern NBA supremacy.

Even if you accept that this is the Old Guy Olympics built around Curry, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant taking their final shots at gold, Tatum shouldn’t be sitting behind anyone.

Please explain why Devin Booker, a player who consistently posts empty numbers on a faux-contender, has played nearly twice as much as Tatum? Or why flavor-of-the-month Anthony Edwards is more worthy of crunch-time minutes?

There’s no rational argument for sitting Tatum, especially against a team like Serbia, which rained threes on Thursday while Kerr left one of his best switching defenders on the bench. Even if you want to argue that Tatum’s shot hasn’t been right all tournament, his defense, rebounding, and playmaking more than compensate. Were Joe Mazzulla coaching the U.S. on Thursday, they win by double digits.

But Kerr seems focused on fielding a Western Conference All-Star team.

It’s hard to miss his Western bias based on the allocation of minutes. The squad features six players from each conference, and the bottom five in playing time all hail from the East: Derrick White (79 minutes), Jrue Holiday (75), Joel Embiid (73), Tatum (!) (60), and Tyrese Haliburton (26). The only Eastern player in the top six is Bam Adebayo at 87. Meanwhile, the leaders are James (114), Curry (104), Booker (105), Durant (102), and Edwards (88).

When you lay out the numbers and see three members of the defending champs in the bottom five, it’s fair to wonder if this is somehow about the Celtics. The fact that Kerr hasn’t played the three C’s together for one minute, forgoing the opportunity to exploit their obvious chemistry, is galling. Imagine fielding an international roster with Curry, Draymond Green, and Klay Thompson and not utilizing them simultaneously. Never in a million years.

If the U.S. somehow chokes the gold medal game against host France, Kerr will deservedly go down in infamy as the coach who screwed up a sure thing. We’re only one Olympics removed, after all, from Tatum being the second-best player on a gold medal squad. Now he’s not good enough to play? Gross.

From a Celtics perspective, this one is going to leave a mark. Tatum finally scaled the mountaintop and barely enjoyed the view for a month before being dragged back into the valley.

He has taken his share of heat over the years, but this is different. It’s one thing to face doubts he could ever lead the C’s to a title. It’s another finally to do it only to have the coach of the league’s greatest modern dynasty decide you’re not worthy of minutes on the international stage.

The easygoing Tatum has never been the kind of player to spit glass like his hero Kobe Bryant, and it’s apparent how wounded he is as he languishes on the bench. But if this title and its aftermath unlocked anything, it’s a welcome streak of “Whatchu you gonna say now?” defiance. Now there’s more fuel for that fire.

It may ultimately play to the benefit of the C’s, since these Games have given their two best players the incentive to go scorched earth on the rest of the NBA and prove that 2024 wasn’t a one-off.

And if that’s the case, and the Celtics rampage to another title, here’s hoping Kerr is forced to watch with his eyes pinned open in the style of a Clockwork Orange while his own word plays on an infinite loop: “Idiot! … Idiot! … Idiot! .. Idiot! …”