BOSTON — Steve Kerr couldn’t believe the story isn’t the gold medal. Team USA trounced Serbia in one of the all-time great Olympic basketball games before winning the tournament over France in Paris. Yet Jayson Tatum never stepping off the bench in the semifinal became a lasting image and lingering story following the team’s return from Europe. Even Tatum admitted it was a humbling experience.
“I don’t think anybody actually cared enough about me to boo me (during my career),” Kerr joked. “We’ll see how it goes tonight. I’m sure, also, a lot of Celtics fans are gonna cheer me for being part of Team USA, winning a gold medal for the country. I’m a patriotic American, I love my country. Three Celtics on the team who won a world championship and two months later won a gold medal, pretty incredible stuff. People can write about whatever they want to write about, playing time or whatever.”
Everything about Wednesday’s meeting between two hot Warriors and Celtics teams lived up to expectations cast immediately upon the 2024-25 schedule release, from Kerr’s long-waited reflection on the Tatum decision to his reaction to the previous day’s presidential election to the crowd’s reception of him. Kerr defended the approach his coaching staff took in Paris and received thunderous boos through a fitting drum-up by public address announcer Eddie Palladino — who slowly read Kerr’s name in introductions. Golden State would eventually flip a seven-point deficit late and won, 118-112.
Tatum shook off an 0-for-4 start to finish 10-of-20, scoring 17 points in the third quarter to erase a 14-point halftime deficit before taking a difficult shot trailing by four with one minute left in the game and failing to contest Buddy Hield in transition. He showed poise against difficult Warriors defensive schemes, and called the game just another Wednesday before relating his approach to the night to the incessant calls for him to act more fiery.
“We can’t control the story,” Kerr said. “It’s part of the deal, you’re going to be in the story is you’re gonna be in the story, and that can be tough. I thought, from the beginning, in Vegas the whole thing was 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, ‘yeah, I didn’t enjoy not playing Jayson against Serbia (and) not playing Joel against South Sudan.’ Those are not fun decisions, but our guys were all amazing. They committed to each other. They committed to winning the gold medal. They brought the gold home for their country. They all carried each other 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.”
Kerr’s frustration with the fallout makes sense as a sliver of the team’s run ballooned into a long-running referendum on Tatum or Kerr, depending on your perspective, following a run that met all expectations for both the Celtics and the US. Tatum’s individual struggles became an extension of his poor Finals shooting or Kerr showed bias against Tatum, or even a long game to mess with his head ahead of a theoretical 2025 Finals matchup, in the most convoluted telling of the tale. All ignoring the fact that elder statesmen Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, and LeBron James in most likely their final international play took the floor in front of Tatum, and that Tatum struggled in preliminary play after going deepest in the NBA postseason.
Now, would Team USA have lost if Kerr expanded the rotation and gave Tatum a few minutes in his DNP-CD games rather than zero? It’s hard to imagine that costing them. So Celtics fans let loose one last frustration with the head coach before play tipped-off on Wednesday. And they mostly moved on after. Only a relatively light “Steve Kerr sucks” chant became audible midway through the game.
“I don’t think that Tatum should’ve gotten two DNPs in the Olympics,” one fan said pre-game. “But on the other hand, he kind of unleashed a monster, and we might be seeing an MVP … I’m gonna thank him. I’m gonna be like, ‘thanks Steve Kerr … but boo.’”
