Team USA's Jayson Tatum problem

Steve Kerr is not an idiot, but he does have a situation on his hands.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Washington Rallying the Troops at Monmouth; Emanuel Leutze; 1851-54

Sunday’s win over Serbia was the best Team USA had looked in the entire cycle. It’s not surprising that it was also Kevin Durant’s first game of the summer for the Red, White and Blue — Durant is the best men’s Olympic basketball player in American history, and a seamless fit on what is essentially an All-Star team as a sniper and supplemental creator. He requires very little of his teammates when on the court, and requires the ball less. But if you give it to him, he can shoot over literally anyone and he’s one of the most effective three-level scorers in the history of the sport. He’s a perfect USA Basketball player.

[This is where I would embed a video clip of Durant being awesome on Sunday, but Olympics videos are un-embeddable on account of the IOC being ridiculous. So I have to link to it.]

As such, it was little surprise that Durant got a bunch of playing time in his 2024 debut, especially in what was a close-ish game in the first half against by far Team USA’s strongest group play rival in Serbia, who won silver at the World Cup last summer without Nikola Jokic, the best player alive. Team USA’s coaching staff had a tough task with this game after close calls in the warm-ups without Durant against South Sudan and Germany. Leaning on Durant heavily seemed an appropriate response, especially when he refused to miss any shot, no matter the perceived difficulty.

What of course stood out to any NBA fan watching, though, is that Jayson Tatum was a healthy scratch from the team on Sunday as Durant took all of his minutes.

Tatum was the only American who made first team All-NBA this season. As many have noted, he led the NBA champions in playoff points, rebounds and assists. By my metric Consensus BPA, which is a weighted consideration of performance in certain NBA award voting over three years, Tatum is the second best player on Team USA (behind Joel Embiid). Had he won either the Eastern Conference Finals MVP or NBA Finals MVP, both of which he was absolutely in the running for, he’d be above Embiid. Tatum was also Team USA’s No. 2 scorer in the last Olympics tournament three summers ago. Team USA won gold there, by the way.

DNPs happen on Team USA. Tyrese Haliburton is also now picking up DNPs, and no one is really saying much about that. But it’s pretty damn weird for Tatum, at this stage of his career, to be relegated to towel-waving duty.

He’s not more accomplished than Durant or LeBron James or Stephen Curry or even Anthony Davis. (I would say he is equally accomplished as AD at this point.) Tatum is definitely more accomplished than everyone else on the team, though. And what’s more, he represents a really important bridge to the next Olympic cycle for Team USA. Durant, LeBron and Curry are in their swan songs. I suspect the 31-year-old Davis is probably done after Paris. We have all acknowledged the lack of Americans in the upper elite of NBA players, where Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luka Doncic are pretty close to consensus best players alive status (even outside the auspices of my awards voting-based stat). Potentially disrespecting the best American still in his 20s, and arguably the best American period, heading into a future without three of the top dozen players in the history of the sport, is a pretty dangerous path.

There are some key issues here causing the weirdness around Tatum’s role on the team.