For the first time in a long time, the Jayson Tatum we’ve known in a Boston Celtics uniform showed up in red, white, and blue.
“I felt good,” Tatum said after a 27 point explosion that knocked the Czech Republic out of the games and sent the United States into the elimination round. “I knew that myself and the rest of the team, we just had to pick up the intensity a little bit. It was kind of close in the first half. And to get some more stops, we'd be able to get in transition, you know, get it out to guys and have guys make plays."
Tatum’s plays mostly came after halftime, when he scored 21 points to turn a single-digit lead into a blowout.
“It was a good night,” Tatum said. “The game just opened up in the second half, the way we were moving it. Obviously, we’re starting to shoot the ball better now than we did in the first game, and we’re getting more comfortable.”
Tatum did a bit of everything as the lead ballooned, he bullied his way to the basket, stepped into 3-pointers, hit fadeaways, ultimately finishing with a 10-16 shooting night. Not bad for a guy who really struggled to get himself going prior to finally heating up against Iran.
“New environment, new basketball, different style of basketball, the rules are different, playing on a new team, it’s a lot of things,” Tatum said. “But I was never worried, never concerned. I knew that shots would fall eventually and start to feel good about yourself, and then it’s just basketball.”
The quarter-finals are next for Team USA, but they don’t know who their opponent will be. The competition ramps up now, with the chaff now separated from the wheat and teams gunning to send the United States home without a medal for the first time ever. After the opening loss to France, Team USA is heading into the next round on a bit of a high note.
“Our confidence never wavered. We understood that it wasn't gonna be easy,” Tatum said. “We didn’t have our full team until four days ago, five days ago, so we knew that we had a lot of challenges ahead of us. And we also know that we would continue to get better every day, we would get better from each game, each practice, just the more time that we spent together, we were never going to be the same team, from day one, that we are now. And hopefully we're better this time next week than we were today.”
OTHER GAME NOTES:
- Kevin Durant passed Carmelo Anthony to become Team USA’s all-time leading scorer.
“You just think about all the players that have played in this program,” Durant said. “It’s pretty cool to be amongst names like that ... it is special to do something like that. Scoring is something I’ve worked on my whole career and expanded my whole career. To consistently do it is pretty cool.”
But Durant knows records are made to be broken. In his postgame walk-off interview, he caught a glimpse of Tatum doing his own media session over his shoulder.
“This guy to the left, I think he's going to be the next guy to break that record,” Durant said of the Celtics star. “There's so many great players, so many great coaches along the way, and I'm just happy to be part of something special.”
- Team USA will have to wait to find out their opponent to start the quarters. According to Team USA, there will be a draw to figure that out after the Group C game between Slovenia (2-0) and Spain (2-0) scheduled to tip off at 4:20 a.m. EDT on Sunday.
“We were behind the eight ball in the beginning, and we’re making some fast progress. We still have a lot of improvement that we must and can make,” head coach Gregg Popovich said. “I think the losses in the beginning put a laser focus on how you have to play with these rules, in this environment against these talented teams who execute wonderfully. If you don’t have respect for your opponents, you’re going to be in big trouble. We learned that the hard way.
“I think our guys have done a good job gaining ground day by day, practice by practice, and hopefully we’ll continue that as we move forward. And we have to if we want to be successful.”