Kevin Garnett on Jayson Tatum: ‘It was great that he didn’t have to play a lot of minutes (on Team USA)’

Former NBA star big man Kevin Garnett — who won a title playing for the Boston Celtics in 2008 — seems to think that the fact that Jayson Tatum didn’t receive a lot of playing time for Team USA in the 2024 Paris Olympics was good for him.

“It was great that he didn’t have to play a lot of minutes, man,” said Garnett. “He’s coming off of the Finals. … I’m glad they didn’t need Jayson Tatum. I’m glad he got to actually rest and chill. … When you win, you get a shortened season, while every body else gets four, five months off. You probably get what, two, two and a half? And then it’s right back in the lab. He had to turn around win the NBA championship. Turn around, what two, two and a half weeks, three weeks, start preparing for USA, and then had to show up to training camp for that. I can only imagine how difficult that was for him.”

Before the start of the Olympics, Tatum was fresh off leading the Celtics to their 18th title in franchise history. He served as the straw that stirred Boston’s offense during the 2024 NBA Playoffs thanks to his scoring and facilitating chops.

The former Duke University standout suited up in every one of Boston’s 19 playoff games and led the Celtics in points (25.0), rebounds (9.7) and assists (6.3) during that span.

He perhaps saved his best individual performance of the Celtics’ title run for Game 5 of the NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks. With a championship on the line, Tatum dropped 31 points on 11-of-24 shooting from the floor while also chipping in eight rebounds, 11 assists and a pair of steals.

But despite Tatum’s playoff heroics a few months back, he played a limited role for Team USA during its journey to a gold medal. He didn’t log a single second of playing time in two of the team’s six contests in Paris, and he reached double digits in scoring just once, when he dropped 10 points on 4-of-9 shooting from the floor versus Puerto Rico on Aug. 3.

In Team USA’s gold medal game versus Victor Wembanyama, Evan Fournier and France, Tatum played just 11 minutes and finished with two points on 1-of-3 shooting from the field. But the United States still won the game by a final score of 98-87 to capture the country its fifth consecutive gold medal in the sport.

While Steve Kerr probably didn’t play Tatum as much as the latter would have hoped, at only 26 years old, Tatum could have another chance to represent his country in four years, when the 2028 Olympics are scheduled to take place in Los Angeles. Plus, as Garnett mentioned, the fact that the forward didn’t see the floor with a whole lot of regularity could have been a blessing in disguise in the sense that it provided Tatum with some respite.