Team USA won the gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics. That’s what it's all about, right? Nah, it’s all about narratives around players! It was Jayson Tatum's lack of playing time that became a frequent talking point.
Tatum played the second-fewest minutes on the Olympic stage for Team USA at 71. Tyrese Haliburton played just 26 while the others to be below 90 are Derrick White (79) and Joel Embiid (84). The Boston Celtics' star forward became the victim of a wild roster crunch, something that was bound to happen on such a talented team. The Tatum family wasn’t happy about the situation, of course, and head coach Steve Kerr thanked Tatum for taking the role in stride.
In an appearance on The Herd with Colin Cowherd, Team USA assistant coach/Gonzaga men's basketball head coach Mark Few explained that there were simply not enough minutes for everyone.
“I think that weighed on all of us. It weighed on Steve very heavily because he really did have — we all had — such an incredible appreciation for all of our guys, and they’re all great,” Few said. “As he said in the first meeting, ‘There’s probably 12 Hall of Famers in this room.’ You wanted them all to have success, you wanted them all to play but like there’s 200 minutes for a team in a game like that and you start splitting it up. It’s hard to split it up 10 ways — and to try to split it up 12. So, a lot of that was not anything that guys weren’t doing, it was more just match-up based.”
Team USA limiting Jayson Tatum's playing time sparked controversy
Some great players were bound to be left out of the rotation of Team USA. Few said that it was a problem having so much talent, in a way. Tatum ended up getting the short end of the stick. Haliburton took being a bench player with stride, joking about his lack of minutes. For Tatum, it was seen as a massive snub.
Any suggestion of anti-Celtics bias towards Kerr and his staff can be shot down by the fact that Jrue Holiday was a regular starter and Derrick White played often, too. Perhaps Team USA could have used Tatum's skills more often — a versatile defender who can get downhill, pass and make the occasional jumper is valuable at the wing spot. But as Few explained, when everyone deserves to play, not everyone will get to.
In the end, Kerr went with other options ahead of Tatum and the Americans survived some scares to win the gold.
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