Following Team USA's opening encounter against Serbia in the 2024 Paris Olympics, Coach Steve Kerr promptly acknowledged his error in failing to allocate playing time to Jayson Tatum and Tyrese Haliburton and also attributed this to Kevin Durant's return to the team. Moreover, this situation highlighted how the star-studded roster might necessitate benching at least one All-NBA player for an entire game, contingent upon the opponent and the specific circumstances Team USA faces game after game.
However, Charles Barkley condemned this approach and advised Kerr to emulate Chuck Daly, the coach of the 1992 Dream Team, whose method of effectively distributing minutes among players was praised by Barkley.
Barkley's sage advice to Steve Kerr
While the 2024 Team USA boasts a formidable array of talent, the Dream Team unarguably featured even more prestigious and accomplished stars of their era. Notably, except for John Stockton, who was contending with an injury, and Christian Laettner, who had yet to make his professional debut, every member of Daly's team featured in all eight games and averaged more than 16 minutes of game time per contest.
Speaking on Sirius XM NBA Radio, The Round Mound of Rebound highlighted the same fact to urge Kerr to adopt the exemplary player rotation blueprint of Daly, stating how no player deserves to be benched in any game at such a stage.
"First of all, he's (Tatum) got to play. Everybody on the team has to play. Do you have to play 25 to 30 minutes? No. It's the Olympics. There's not a huge downgrade to putting Jayson Tatum in the game. Chuck Daly did a fabulous job. He had two starting units, " Barkley said. "What he did was, you guys going to play the first 10 minutes, you guys going to play the second 10 minutes."
Sir Charles found it even more perplexing that despite Team USA stretching their lead to double digits since the early minutes of the third quarter, not all players got minutes under their belt. At the same time, LeBron James and Devin Booker each played 26 minutes.
"You can't expect anybody to go out there and practice and then not play in the Olympics," Barkley added. "Come on man."
Steve Kerr is likely to make big changes in his plans
Even though JT and Hali have plenty of competition at their positions, being All-NBA selectees means they can't be benched for another game. Furthermore, with Tatum leading the Celtics in scoring in the 2024 EC and NBA Finals and Tyrese leading the league in assists this past season, it's clear that their versatile abilities are bound to come into use at some point.
With their next game against a more athletic and pacy South Sudan team, Coach Kerr is likely to mix in his younger players more, so expect Tatum and Haliburton to finally get some minutes.
Related: "Every time he'd run up the court everyone would feel sorry for the guy" - Clyde Drexler claimed Magic Johnson was gifted a spot on Dream Team
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