They say a win can lay to rest all the controversies and negativities. Not always. Go have a chat with a Boston Celtics fan and you will get it. Surely, they take pride in their national basketball team picking up its fifth straight Olympic gold medal in Paris. But there is something that still stings them: Jayson Tatum’s reduced play time throughout the game. That Tatum who was also part of the gold-winning Tokyo Olympic squad, averaging 15.2 points, 3.3 rebounds, 1.2 assists, and 1.2 blocks per game. That Tatum who, just 2 months ahead of the Olympics, had won the national championship with the Celtics. The trend of Tatum’s shortened playtime started right from the opening game.

Tatum’s playtime in the USA’s opener against Serbia was zero! While Kevin Durant was a big talking point of the game after returning from injury to drop a game-high 23 points, discussions of Tatum’s absence became louder. He had to watch as his fellow Celtics teammates Derrick White and Jrue Holiday contributed to the win, sending the social media to a frenzy. NBA great Isaiah Thomas wrote on X: “Is Tatum hurt?” However, after this, he played in three consecutive game even scoring a double-double (10 points, 10 rebounds) against Puerto Rico On August 3. It seemed that the opener might have been a one-off case. Wrong were they.

In a rematch against Serbia, he was benched again. This time even Tatum’s mother Brandy Cole called out. After that August 8 game, legendary player, coach and sports analyst Dick Vitale openly wondered on X if Tatum is injured. Responding to that, Cole wrote, “No he not. But if you find out what’s going on please let me know – unacceptable and makes NO SENSE.” Come to the gold medal game against France and the saga continued. The forward played a shade over 11 minutes, finishing with 2 points and 3 rebound while shooting 1-for-3 from the field. However, Tatum’s excitement did not seem to have dented.

“It’s been a crazy summer,” he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (h/t Noa Dalzell of SB Nation). “Fortunate enough to win my second Olympic gold medal on the national team. That was a hell of an experience. Finally won an NBA championship, something I’ve been working on for a very, very long time.” Since then, both Kerr and Tatum has repeatedly said that they do not have any hard feeling for that. But who cares? Looks like, the Netflix creators do. So Director Jake Rogal’s docuseries, Court of Gold, that captured the highs and lows of Team USA’s run, noticeably avoided this controversial part. In an interview with HoopsHype Rogal clarified the reason behind this.

During the interview, Rogal admitted that Tatum’s benching was a major storyline at the time, but it didn’t align with the docuseries’ main objective. “While it was a big story at the time, it wasn’t what we were trying to do with the doc because we were explaining how these countries got to where they are.” Yes, the focus of the docuseries was to cover the Olympic Gold pursuit of four nations: the USA, France, Canada, and Serbia. But the Tatum-Kerr storyline, as attention-grabbing as it was, did not fit Rogal’s vision.

He continued, “While it was dramatic from an NBA storyline, it didn’t really fit into the storyline of what we’re trying to do. Even if we had gotten that access, I’m not quite sure where it would fit in our storyline of what we were trying to build.” Interestingly, Rogal did approach Steve Kerr to hear his perspective on the controversy.

However, the Golden State Warriors head coach chose not to elaborate on the situation. “We felt like that was a respectful place to start,” Rogal revealed. He added, “We thought if coach Kerr wanted to really elaborate on it, or explain the inside of it that would be a respectful place to start, but it just never really formulated in that way.” Notably, Tatum himself was never approached for an interview on the topic. Meanwhile, some fans have a counter-argument for Tatum’s less playtime.

After Kawahi’s knee injury, Kerr had a 12-man squad of 3 bigs, three wings, and six guards on hand. The squad was playing long opponents. Therefore AD, Bam, and Embiid had to be there. On the other hand, Kerr had Curry, Booker, Edwards, Holiday, White, Haliburton as guards. Ant, Steph, Booker, and Jrue were shooting remarkably while the last two of them making a lot of assists. LeBron and Kevin Durant were also in killer form. In this situation, some fans argue that for giving Tatum more minutes might have cost Booker or Curry’s. That might not have been a good idea. Steve Kerr himself admitted his difficulties with playtime.

Top Comment by Rucker12

Obviously Kerr had some sort of issue or bias with Tatum or his style of play that kept him on...more

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Steve Kerr reveals the “Hardest Part” about his job as Team USA Head Coach

While the Netflix docuseries avoided the Tatum controversy, Kerr did acknowledge the toughest part of coaching a star-studded American Olympic team: allocating playing time.

“I think the hardest part of the job for me is playing time. Even picking the rotations, you know. How do you put seven Hall of Famers on the bench? I’ve told the team, ‘This is hard for us, too. It’s hard for you to not play. It’s hard for us to not play you,’” Kerr admitted in one of the episodes. Had Kerr played Tatum his desired minutes, it would have been at the expense of some other star’s playing time. So, a controversy was imminent because there was no bench player on that squad.

While  Jayson Tatum got a DNP on two occasions and averaged only 17.7 minutes of on-court time, Tyrese Haliburton was also forced to sit out three games. “Basketball is just basketball,” Kerr stated, reinforcing that his decisions were purely strategic. Kerr told the Boston Globe after the rematch against Serbia that Tatum wasn’t seeing more time because of a “math problem.”

“It’s not what I’m not seeing from Jayson; it’s what I’ve seen from the other guys,” Kerr said, courtesy of Adam Himmelsbach of The Boston Globe. “Like I’ve said many times during this tournament and the last six weeks, it’s just hard to play 11 people, even in an NBA game. Our second unit was not great last night, but that group has been one of the bright spots on this team, especially on the defensive end. So it’s not about what Jayson is doing or not doing. It’s just about combinations and the way that group has played together, the way Kevin [Durant] has filled in since he came back from his injury. It’s just a math problem more than anything.”

Of course, Kerr’s only job was to lead Team USA to a gold medal, and he did everything that was needed to achieve that goal. So, blaming him for benching a player regardless of how big a superstar he is might be a bit unfair. Do you agree?