There isn’t an 82-game regular-season schedule that allows weeks of feeling a roster out and better understanding the success and combinations and lineups. The 2024 Paris Summer Olympics isn’t a 16-win goal like the NBA playoffs. Instead, everything is condensed down to winning six games to call yourself a world champion while a gold medal is placed around your neck.
Team USA men’s basketball is off to a roaring start in standing atop the medal stage, beating their first two opponents, Serbia and South Sudan by a combined 43 points, yet the main talking points after both wins have been about who didn’t play as opposed to the ways the Americans have dismantled their competition thus far.
It is absurd. Are we that spoiled? Steve Kerr, whether he’s coaching the Warriors or Team USA, is going to hunt matches. That is exactly what he did against Serbia and South Sudan, cruising to two early victories.
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"Last game, we had a champion and an All-NBA guy not play any minutes, and tonight we had an MVP not play any minutes,” Kevin Durant said to reporters Wednesday after Team USA’s 103-86 win over South Sudan. “They didn’t complain. We had guys who stepped up and filled those roles perfectly."
Jayson Tatum on Sunday in Team USA’s opening blowout against Serbia wore his white warmup gear and sat on the bench for all 40 minutes. Joel Embiid on Wednesday was the odd man out, stuck to the bench wearing blue sweats and never revealing his No. 11 jersey.
Tatum is coming off his first NBA championship, was named to his third straight All-NBA First Team this past season and was awarded a record-breaking five-year, $314 million contract extension by the Boston Celtics exactly one month ago. For more than a year Team USA recruited Embiid to choose them as opposed to playing for France or Cameroon in the Olympics, and boobirds have chirped loudly and aplenty in France whenever he enters the court. Though he was held to only 39 games this past season, the two years prior Embiid led the NBA scoring and won the 2022-23 MVP after finishing second for two straight years.
Welcome to playing for a team whose talent can only be compared to the 1992 Dream Team. The reality also is neither had been great before their one-game benching, too.
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In Team USA’s 26-point exhibition win against Nikola Jokic and his Serbian teammates, Tatum started and played 21 minutes. The Celtics star scored four points, the lowest among starters, and had a team-high four turnovers. Against a wing-heavy South Sudan team where Team USA escaped an exhibition win by one point, Embiid had a strong box-score showing of 14 points and seven rebounds but it was clear his style didn’t match the speed that coach Royal Ivey wants to play with. Since the start of exhibitions, Embiid’s playing preference as a ball-dominant big hasn’t exactly matched Kerr’s ball-movement philosophy while Anthony Davis and Bam Adebayo have thrived for the most part.
“I think the NBA is so popular worldwide and the regular season is kind of a soap opera,” Kerr said, via The Athletic’s Joe Vardon. “We understand that, and social media takes over and everything becomes so dramatic. I think we need to give these guys more credit. They’re here to win a gold medal. They’re pros. They’re committed to each other.”
His awards and accolades don’t match those of Tatum and Embiid, but it was Tyrese Haliburton who was first subjected to the bench. One of the only leftovers from Kerr’s disappointing 2023 FIBA World Cup team, Haliburton’s exhibition game minutes dwindled from 20 to 18, 14, seven and then zero in their final games prior to Paris. Like Tatum, he too didn’t get off the bench in the first game of group play.
Yet Haliburton made his Olympics debut halfway through the second quarter against South Sudan and hit back-to-back 3-pointers within a minute of each other. So it goes.
Who’s next? Kerr already has said Steph Curry, Jrue Holiday, Devin Booker, LeBron James and Embiid will start Saturday against Puerto Rico. Holiday and Embiid were out of the starting lineup last game, replaced by Tatum and Davis. Curry and James will be part of the starting five, and that might be the only promise Kerr can make.
Maybe Tatum will be subjected to the sidelines after being a minus-4 and scoring four points in his start against South Sudan. Team USA’s bench has shown virtually no weakness, creating playing time hysteria better left for delusional AAU parents.
Two wins down and four to go from Team USA winning a fifth straight Olympic gold. Until the scoreboard says otherwise, find a new angry avenue to drive down. Kerr can handle the hard decisions he must make, and these players can too, or else they’d be watching from home like everyone else.
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