Celtics forward Jayson Tatum still frustrated with Olympic experience under Steve Kerr

The Boston Celtics are playing solid basketball at the moment, despite missing Jayson Tatum due to an Achilles injury. During his time in recovery, Tatum has been working to get better. However, he also appeared on a recent podcast episode and said he still has not gotten over the experience at the 2024 Olympics because he did not play as well and saw little playing time.

Tatum was on the most recent episode of “The Pivot Podcast” and talked about his time in those Olympics. He thought he earned more playing time, especially after how he played in the 2021 Olympics. He did not understand the strategy and believed his play would earn him more playing time.

Tatum said, “To be honest, that was tough because this is my second time in the Olympics, and you know we went in 2021, we were in Tokyo, and my experience was totally different. I was the second leading scorer behind KD, and we beat France; we ended up winning a gold medal. So, you know, in 2024, I was first-team All-NBA. Came off a championship. I was on the cover of 2K. Like, I was on top of the world. I just signed the largest contract in NBA history. So, I was riding this cloud. And then I get to the Olympics, and it didn’t go how I wanted it.”

At the time, Tatum was getting a lot of people telling him they couldn’t wait to see him play the Warriors and Steve Kerr, but he couldn’t process it and was only worried about how he felt in the moment. He was angry in the moment he didn’t care about proving Steve Kerr wrong down the road. He volunteered his time to play for Team USA, but he wasn’t getting the opportunity he thought he would.

At the time, Tatum was coming off an NBA title win, had just signed a huge contract, and was the only American named to the All-NBA team. Still, that Olympics team was loaded and managed to win the gold medal even with Tatum playing sporadically.

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