Jaylen Brown's Finals MVP win wasn't enough to secure him a spot on Team USA when a player with a similar skill set — Kawhi Leonard — pulled out of the Paris Games. And his Celtics running mate, Jayson Tatum, was used sparingly by head coach Steve Kerr through Team USA's six games in the Olympics.
The turn of events has raised the antennas of a pair of legendary NBA sixth men. On the "Underground Lounge" podcast, Lou Williams and Jamal Crawford pondered if there's "a conspiracy" against the two Jays. Williams even pointed to the league "trying to pit" Tatum and Brown against each other, including this past season when the latter won all the individual hardware en route to a title.
"Is there a conspiracy going on against Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown?" Williams asked. "I really want to know, because I'm trying to wrap my head around this whole concept of Jaylen Brown not being on that [Team USA] team. I'm trying to wrap my head around the league trying to pit them against each other when they've never done that to two superstars. Now, you got JT not getting minutes [in the Olympics]."
While Crawford didn't put on a tin-foil hat citing a full-blown conspiracy, he did criticize Kerr for riding Tatum on the bench for two of the six contests at the Paris Games.
"I'm not rolling with that," Crawford said of Kerr's usage of Tatum. "Nobody on this team should not play after getting here [to Paris]. What are we talking about? You don't do that."
Conspiracy or not, Tatum and Brown have a valid reason to be upset with USAB. The Celtics could end up being the beneficiaries of two in-their-prime superstars playing with a chip on their shoulder.
Tatum has already spoken about using the Olympics experience as "fuel" to motivate him ahead of the 2024-2025 season that opens with the Celtics as odds-on favorites to repeat as NBA champions. The C's are trying to become the first team to go back-to-back since the 2018 Warriors and the 2013 Heat.
