BOSTON — There was a blemish to the gold medal the USA men’s basketball team secured in France this summer.
At least from a Boston Celtics perspective there was.
Celtics star Jayson Tatum surprisingly wasn’t an integral piece in the team’s global dominance. That was in large part due to Steve Kerr. The Golden State Warriors head coach, who also guided the stacked Team USA squad, elected to bench Tatum twice over the six-game tournament. It was a puzzling decision by Kerr to not play a perennial MVP candidate fresh off winning an NBA title and Kerr faced immediate backlash.
Three months removed from that Olympic success, Kerr is still facing questions about benching Tatum and it was certainly top of mind with the Warriors at TD Garden on Wednesday to take on the Celtics.
And Kerr made it clear that he didn’t regret how things played out with Tatum at the Olympics.
“We can’t control the story. That’s this job. I tell our players all the time the NBA is incredibly popular and there’s a reason it’s so lucrative. It’s a part of the deal is you’re going to be in the story,” Kerr said prior to facing the Celtics. “That can be tough. I thought from the beginning in Vegas the whole thing was, ‘Hey, we’re in this together. We got 12 Hall of Famers and we’re just committed to winning.’ And we won the gold medal.
“I don’t give it a whole lot of thought other than I didn’t enjoy not playing Jayson against Serbia, not playing Joel (Embiid) against South Sudan. Those are not fun decisions.”
Tatum admitted the Olympics was a “challenging” experience but he said and did all the right things, staying professional by always putting the team above himself.
Kerr’s benching of Tatum overshadowed that the Celtics star along with his Olympic teammates completed the task and captured another gold medal. And that doesn’t sit well with Kerr.
“Our guys we’re all amazing,” Kerr said. “They committed to each other, they committed to winning the gold medal. They brought the gold home for their country. They all handled themselves with incredible dignity and class and that’s the real story. But we live in a time where we have to talk about stuff that actually doesn’t really matter.”
