The Jayson Tatum saga is turning into Sir Charles’ greatest hits. Because he’s sounding like a broken record. Especially since everyone agreeing with Charles Barkley did not induce Steve Kerr to play the reigning NBA champ. But there’s the other side of Chuck’s argument. Tatum was sidelined in two significant matchups – the opening game and a medal game – both against the same opponent. The wins didn’t impress Barkley because of the difficult time Team USA had against arguably the best player in the world right now, Nikola Jokic. It’s Barkley’s firm conviction that Tatum would be the answer to Team USA’s Joker dilemma.

His JT campaign was called “asinine” at ESPN. Nonetheless, Barkley doubles down on Dan LaBatard’s show pointing out that Jokic was toying with them. “I think they [Serbia] played too slow because you could see what Joker was doing. He was milking the clock, he would take the ball out of bounds, and roll it up the court. They turn a 40 minute game basically into like a 35 to 37 minute game. So they let [Jokic] play slow. I think they should have played a lot faster.” 

After Tatum didn’t play in the opening game where Jokic and Serbia suffered a blowout loss against the US, Barkley was furious. In the later games, Serbia struggled whenever the Nuggets big man was not on the floor. Serbia barely qualified for the semis to face the USA again. This time Barkley warned that Serbia was not to be taken lightly and they’ve so far let everyone’s guard down by skating by.

As he predicted, Jokic effortlessly put Serbia ahead by 17 points at one point and maintained the lead by a good margin for about 35 minutes of the entire game. Tatum never came off the bench but Steph Curry sure showed up, sunk nine 3-pointers, and scored 36 points alone. US had a marginal 95-91 win, and Barkley implies it would’ve been a bigger gap had Tatum been on the floor against Jokic.

Team USA won, but so did Serbia’s strategy

Before the semifinals, Barkley maintains that Serbia had a possum strategy in the opening game to bring US’ confidence down. Even after they beat Jokic, his opinion hasn’t changed. He told LaBatard that Serbia’s second-best player is Hawks star, Bogdan Bogdanovic who is not competition to USA starters. His focus is Joker-shaped.

The Dream Team star felt that Tatum had the potential to be the second-best player on Team USA if he had played against Jokic. “for him to not get any minutes in two games, come on man, that wasn’t right,” he iterated. Possibly because JT has strong backup while Jokic lacks Jamal Murray in the Olympics. So Chuckster thinks The Joker would’ve had a more humiliating defeat against USA.

Yet his would’ve-been take is not winning many over. Does that change Charles Barkley’s mind? Not even a little.

Stay tuned for more such updates. And join us for the exciting second episode of the “Dual Threat Show” as our host BG12 sits down with Georgia Bulldogs star and Mountain West All-Freshman Team Selection, Asia Avinger.