Charles Barkley telepathically reads Jayson Tatum’s psyche! The defending champions, Boston Celtics, continued from where they left the court in the 2024 NBA Finals. On the opening night of the fresh season, the Celts took on the Knicks and mowed down the Big Apple side. Guess who was the principal aggressor? The team’s leader, JT. There could be many reasons behind his dominating start, dropping an efficient 25 points at the end of the first half, but Chuck picked the right storyline.

During the halftime game analysis, Barkley batted for the Celts forward and said, “If I’m Jayson Tatum, I’m pissed off at what happened during the Olympics.” The legend continued, “I’m coming in like, ‘Oh y’all think I ain’t good enough to play in the Olympics. We just won the championship.’ Same thing with Jaylen Brown, who wasn’t even on that team.” 

Jayson Tatum became the story of the 2024 offseason. Firstly, a large section of NBA fans trolled the superstar for copying the championship celebrations of legends from yesteryears. While that lasted for about a month, it was followed by the Paris Olympics drama. Team USA assembled an Avengers unit, comprising LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, alongside other superstars.

So, it was a given that it’s quite hard to make it to the starting lineup, but critics didn’t expect that Jayson Tatum would not even make it to the second unit. Well, there were a lot of voices pointing out Coach Steve Kerr’s controversial decision.

Nevertheless, the team consistently won games and ultimately brought home the Gold. And Jayson Tatum’s Olympic snub slowly died down as the buzz surrounding the 2024-25 NBA season picked up pace. However, both Charles Barkley and the proud Celt don’t seem to have forgotten it. The Celts superstar put up a dominant 37-point effort to draw first blood, 109-132 win over the NY Knicks.

Jayson Tatum responds to Charles Barkley’s solidarity

Charles Barkley didn’t just bring up the Olympics snub just for the sake of opening night. The NBA legend raised his voice during the offseason as well. Around the time when the NBA world debated over the future of the NBA on TNT, Chuck said, “For him not to get any minutes in two games, come on man, that wasn’t right, that wasn’t fair,” after recognizing Tatum as the best player on the side.

Barkley further added, “If you’re going to the Olympics, you want to play… Them guys dedicated their summer to the United States. To go over there and not get to play, I didn’t like that at all.” 

However, the head coach, who was responsible for the player rotation, simply raised both his hands up in the air, and said, “It’s not what I’m not seeing from Jayson; it’s what I’ve seen from the other guys… It’s just hard to play 11 people, even in an NBA game.”

Nevertheless, Jayson Tatum silently responded to Charles Barkley’s support with a perfect start to the season, sinking a three-pointer as the Celtics’ opening point. It set the stage for the night; the hooper clocked out making 8 deep-range shots from his 11 attempts and also dished out 10 assists. On the other hand, teammates followed JT’s path and sank a total of 29 three-pointers, equalizing the record (Bucks, 2020) for most three-pointers in a game. Notably, they also consecutively missed 13 shots from far!

Do you think Jayson Tatum will continue to keep the flame burning? Let us know in the comments.

Before leaving, do watch the Dual Threat Show hosted by BG12 where Bulldogs’ Asia Avinger details her experience with Kobe Bryant, her WNBA ROTY picks, and more in the video below.