Fencer reregistered wrote:Makes one wonder whether Tatum will ever play in the FIBA general tournament and try for a complete set.
Right now the biggest US stars skip the tournament, and the US generally does pretty badly. Certainly the team Tatum was on in 2019 bombed, but he also missed most of the tournament with an injury.
That tournament was a disaster in terms of commitments given and backed out of. From the invitees to camp in Vegas to the time that the actual tourney happened there were I think only two maybe three players who stayed committed. Tatum was one of them which is why I always liked him all the more. That's also where the Tatum/Brown/White bromance first blossomed so there's another unforseen benefit of doing the right thing. Look how that all worked out later.
But as to those who dropped out, it's like they're insulted when not invited but when invited drop out lightly. The circumstances at the time made it so as force NBA players into harder situations as FIBA moved the scheduling of the games closer to Olympics. It was written about at the time how FIBA wanted this tournament to be more competitive and the hope was that fewer NBA players (meaning those from US) would participate. Plus it was all the way over in China so...
The primary goal was to get an Olympic spot and that team did that. But yeah with all but a couple of stars staying committed and then THE main guy Tatum going out with injury, well, it was a constant challenge to keep reintroducing team concepts to new groups, getting the revolving individuals to gel, shuffling lineups due to injuries, etc.
Tatum's a standup guy for sticking with the national team through it all.