It doesn’t matter if Jayson Tatum performs for Crew USA

Olympic basketball is meant to be enjoyable. However proper now, I’m not likely having enjoyable.

It’s enjoyable fan-casting a dream workforce of gamers for Crew USA, as is questioning if Anthony Edwards or Devin Booker ought to begin or what the perfect massive rotation is. It’s a convention to listen to that Kawhi Leonard is simply too injured to play, write articles about cryptic posts on social media about who received snubbed, in the event that they’re mad about it, or in the event that they hate their teammates now and if it’s truly Grant Hill’s fault.

It’s all in good enjoyable, however none of it’s about basketball. As a result of for USA Basketball, Olympic basketball isn’t about basketball. For the opposite 11 basketball groups on this event, it’s about basketball. However for this political get together we name USA Basketball, profitable basketball video games has by some means turn out to be a second precedence behind the exhausting and unoriginal greater fish all of us by some means ended up frying: silly, invented and downright uninteresting narratives about Jayson Tatum and Joel Embiid.

Not too long ago, on the 2024 Olympic Video games in Paris, Tatum performed zero minutes within the workforce’s first sport towards Serbia. Then, after head coach Steve Kerr acquired roughly seven trillion questions on it, Tatum began the next sport towards South Sudan, logging 4 factors and 17 minutes. In the meantime, Joel Embiid had roughly the inverse sport log, beginning the Serbia sport however touchdown a DNP towards South Sudan. After the sport, Embiid was named a starter for the subsequent sport towards Puerto Rico.

Is that this significantly what the Olympics are going to be about? Am I truly going to must spend this whole lengthy march to a gold medal listening to about Tatum and Embiid’s worth prefer it’s mid-March in a traditional NBA season? If this was truly about profitable, then placing collectively a steady eight-man rotation could be priorities primary, two and three for Kerr and Co., they usually had ample time to take action.

As an alternative, they’ve elected to flip-flop round like a pair of Birkenstocks to attempt to soothe the calls for of indignant followers who need this man or that man or these two or that lineup to get kind of or no taking part in time. It’s chaos, and morphing into some type of magnificence pageant to point out off the newest basketball developments within the USA one after the other. And this chicanery is inspired by the truth that they’re nonetheless going to win anyway as a result of they’re simply so a lot better.

Kerr claimed that the lineup modifications have been primarily based on “matchups,” a time period so imprecise it could cowl all method of sins. It’s attainable USA Basketball had crunched the numbers and tape, however one wonders precisely how refined the matchup information was for Tatum not taking part in towards Ognjen Dobric for Serbia however completely countering Nuni Omot for South Sudan.

Picture by Garrett W. Ellwood/NBAE by way of Getty Photos

I’m not aware about all the small print, however normally, basketball groups don’t toss NBA champions and league MVPs across the rotation like they’re a kind of Chinese language yo-yos getting hurled round a stage by your pal Eric on the Fifth-grade expertise present. Typically, the end-of-the-bench guys are simply glad to be there, and in the event that they log zero minutes however fourteen sideline-towel-spins and 9 air-guitar shreds, that’s a strong day’s work.

However these gamers normally don’t find yourself beginning the subsequent sport, and are additionally normally not named Jayson Tatum or Joel Embiid. These rotations simply look humorous, just because USA Basketball recruited a workforce with method too many good gamers and never sufficient minutes to play all of them. On a traditional basketball workforce, that may be all effectively and good, however having the “DNP – CD” tag go on Jayson Tatum simply doesn’t sit proper with anybody.

However now we have to keep in mind that this workforce isn’t about profitable, since that’s going to occur anyway. It’s about sending the suitable message, and it’s turning the Olympics right into a LeBron James-captained redemption arc for the failures of USA Basketball on the current FIBA World Cup, after they unceremoniously misplaced to Germany.

These Olympics are about what James has given to the game, what Durant has given to USA Basketball and why Stephen Curry doesn’t have a gold medal but. There’s a lot else to select from, too: Kawhi Leonard dropped out. Jaylen Brown is tweeting the head-scratching emoji. Anthony Edwards may be Michael Jordan and Derrick White is a very nice man. Tatum is just like the ninth most attention-grabbing story on this workforce, so it’s no marvel he’s not precisely the highest precedence to play.

For the USA Basketball workforce, striving in direction of “victory” is irrelevant, not compelling and due to this fact dangerous enterprise. Any end result aside from gold could be a nationwide embarrassment given the expertise mismatch, so reporters and media members focus extra on the rotations and on making up the explanation why a Tatum DNP issues in a sport Crew USA received by 26.

That is going to drive me insane. If we’re simply centered on profitable, then let’s drop these narratives about who performed and who didn’t when any mixture of 5 gamers on the roster will robotically be higher than the opposition and simply focus on beating them.

If it’s truly about these narratives, although, then I assume we’d higher proceed our evaluation of this non-issue and I’d higher proceed not likely having fun with Olympic basketball. However I’d reasonably not do this.