Tatum ‘will play’ for Team USA against South Sudan after being benched Sunday, Kerr says

PARIS — Team USA coach Steve Kerr said Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum will “play” Wednesday against South Sudan, partly because the three-time All-NBA first-team selection was not selected in the Americans’ win over Serbia.

“I’m not going to answer your next question, which is if he plays, who doesn’t, but we’re going to need him and part of that job for me is keeping everybody engaged and ready because my experience with this is crazy things happen,” Kerr said Monday at the team hotel.

Team USA beat Serbia 110-84 in the Olympic opener for both teams on Sunday, in a game that saw Kevin Durant return from injury. Durant scored 23 points and made his first eight shots as a substitute, but his addition to Kerr’s rotation meant a very, very good player was leaving the court.

It turned out to be Tatum, who had been told before the game that Kerr intended to start Devin Booker and bench Durant. Booker, by the way, scored 12 points on four three-pointers with five assists. Derrick White came off the bench with three key defensive plays, consistent with his role.

With Kerr’s announcement that Tatum will be on the field against South Sudan, that could mean that someone who played well on Sunday will either play less or not at all on Wednesday.

“The hardest part of this job is you have at least two world-class players, some of the best players on the planet, and on one hand, it doesn’t make sense,” Kerr said. “On the other hand, I’m asking these guys to commit to winning a game and moving on to the next one. I have to do the same thing. And so last night, I felt like those combinations made the most sense.”

Kerr’s exclusion of Tatum has drawn widespread attention in the United States, where pundits and fans on social media have criticized Kerr for not playing a player with Tatum’s performance and talent. Not only has he been selected to the All-NBA first team for three consecutive years and is coming off an NBA championship, but Tatum was also the second-leading scorer on the Tokyo Olympic team that won gold.

Immediately after the game, as he explained his decision, Kerr said, “I thought I was crazy.” In an interview with ESPN hours later, Kerr said, “I felt like an idiot” for not playing a player of Tatum’s caliber.

But context is needed, something Kerr tried to provide or at least hint at in explaining his decision.

Tatum appeared in all five exhibition games with two starts, splitting time with Booker on the wing while Durant was out with a calf injury. Tatum averaged 6.4 points, shot 47 percent from the field and missed all six of his three-pointers.

The power forward position was always going to be a pressure point for the U.S. roster, and the glut of talent the Americans have is one reason they sent Kawhi Leonard home. No, he wasn’t developing as fast as he had when he was out of shape and his chronically injured knee wasn’t hurting, but the U.S. team also felt like it had a lot of forwards and not enough defensive-minded guards.

So for those wondering why White is getting playing time instead of Tatum, even though he wasn’t on Team USA at the start of training camp, White and Tatum play different positions and do different things. White is a defensive specialist, at least when he plays on the Olympic team, and he plays on the second unit to stop the opposing point guard at the point of attack. White scored just two points in 16 minutes against Serbia, but had two key steals and a key block in the first half when the game was tight.

White’s emergence doesn’t impact Tatum’s playing time, but rather the minutes that could have been allocated to Tyrese Haliburton. Haliburton hasn’t played in the last two games since the exhibition season and saw his minutes cut in half in White’s first two games with Team USA, in Abu Dhabi.

Kerr could of course give White’s minutes to Tatum and rework the rotation to cover what White is supposed to do, but South Sudan is playing a defense-heavy team that put a lot of pressure on the Americans in a friendly in London. The U.S. trailed by 16 points in that game in the first half, and White was on a comeback, starting the second half as Kerr looked to open the half with a solid defensive lineup.

“We have to be better prepared for what they’re going to do, how many three-pointers they’re going to take, how fast they play,” Kerr said of South Sudan, specifically citing Carlik Jones, who has played 12 NBA games in three seasons and had a triple-double with 15 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists against the Americans last time out.

Of the 12 Americans, only White was not selected to the NBA All-Star team last season. But he was a key part of the Boston Celtics’ championship team and earned a $125 million contract extension.

Kerr could decide to trade Tatum for Booker or Durant. Tatum could start in place of Booker or come off the bench while Durant starts. Or, they could rest Durant, who is coming back from that calf injury, and return to the rotation used during the exhibition campaign while Durant was out.

Kerr could, one assumes, play smaller and get rid of one of his three big men. Of the three, Joel Embiid seems to have the hardest time doing what’s asked of him (his stats outnumber Bam Adebayo’s, for example, but Adebayo, like White, is mostly called upon for defense).

In six games this summer with Team USA, Embiid is averaging 9.7 points and 6.0 rebounds. He scored four points on 2-of-5 shooting with two rebounds and three turnovers against Serbia.

“I think Joel struggled last night but it wasn’t a surprise given he’d been ill the previous few days,” Kerr said. “He was really fit before that, his last two friendlies were his best so I’m pleased with him going forward.”

It’s a tough decision, one that Kerr must make with the best interests of Team USA at heart. As Kerr said, the American experience isn’t supposed to be about “NBA bullshit,” which he said wasn’t common on this team. “It’s just about going out there and winning,” he said.

“The main thing about this experience is there are six games,” Kerr said. “Every game is different. We’re going to need everybody. So sometimes the matchups will determine who we play, but we need everybody to be ready to play and do whatever it takes to win this game, that’s what we have to do.”

(Top photo: Garrett Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images)