Celtics News: Steve Kerr Unapologetic For Benching Jayson Tatum in Olympics

Matt Levine | Nov 7, 2024

Brett Davis-Imagn Images

The Boston Celtics took on the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday night and fell to Golden State for their second loss of the season. It was the first time that the Celtics had played the Warriors this season but this game had a little more meaning to it.

After participating in the Olympics this summer with Team USA, Celtics star Jayson Tatum went through an interesting experience. He was benched during his time with Team USA multiple times but in the end, the Americans did claim the gold medal.

Warriors head coach Steve Kerr was the leading person for Team USA so he was the one making the decision to bench Tatum. Many people around the NBA didn't take kindly to Kerr's decision, leading to all sorts of criticism being aimed at him.

Before the game against the Celtics, Kerr doubled down on his decisions over the summer, showing no remorse for benching the Boston star.

“We can’t control the story,” Kerr said before Wednesday’s game. “So that’s this job. I tell our players all the time, the NBA is incredibly popular, and the reason it’s so lucrative and a part of the deal is you’re gonna be in the story. So that can be tough. But from the beginning in Vegas the whole thing was we’re in this together. We’ve got 12 Hall of Famers and we’re just committed to winning, and we won a gold medal. So I don’t give it a whole lot of thought other than that I didn’t enjoy not playing Jayson against Serbia, not playing Joel against South Sudan. Those are not fun decisions.”

Kerr was booed during the game by Boston fans but the veteran head coach has been used to all the scrutiny. He has helped the Warriors win four NBA titles so this was nothing new to him.

However, he wasn't expecting to be booed prior to tip-off.

“I don’t think anybody actually cared enough about me to boo me,” Kerr said. ‘But we’ll see how it goes tonight. But 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.”

The Celtics, Warriors rivalry was already fairly intense after the two sides met in the NBA Finals years ago. But now with the actions from the summer, it seems that they could be in for some more fun matchups down the road.

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