The Whiteboard: Feel your anger, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown — it gives you focus

Getting benched on Team USA might have been the best thing to happen to Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics. Ditto for Jaylen Brown being left off the team altogether.

They might not admit it, but they wouldn’t be where they are — multiple-time All-Stars and All-NBA honorees, defending champions — if they weren’t at least somewhat motivated by these perceived slights.

“Did I need any motivation coming into the season?” Tatum told reporters at Celtics media day on Tuesday. “No. I’m not going to give anybody in particular credit that that motivated me to come into the season.”

The Celtics will need all the fuel they can find to repeat as NBA champions.

Brown, the defending Finals MVP who signed the most lucrative contract in league history before his teammate broke the record this summer, also avoided specifics.

“I’m extremely motivated for obvious reasons,” Brown said, “and I’m ready to get after it.”

In case you need a refresher, Tatum won an Olympic gold medal with Team USA but didn’t play in two games during the tournament, and mostly received ceremonial minutes in the games he did play.

Meanwhile, Brown was passed over for a spot on the Olympic roster after Kawhi Leonard left the team over the summer. His teammates, Tatum, Derrick White and Jrue Holiday, all won gold medals with Team USA. Brown was asked about the snub in his first question at media day.

“G---amn,” Brown said. “We can’t warm up a little?”

However much the J’s publicly acknowledge using the Olympics as fuel for this season,  they shouldn’t run from it. This is good! Celtics coach Joe Mazulla knows it.

“Joe was probably the happiest person in the world that I didn’t win Finals MVP and that I didn’t play in two of the games in the Olympics,” Tatum said. “So, that was odd, but if you know Joe it makes sense.”

It makes sense because it’s easy to kick your feet up after winning a title, especially if you’re young, like Tatum and Brown, and expect to be competing for years to come. But you never know when the championship window will close. 

Don’t you think the Thunder, with Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden, thought they would make another Finals after 2012? In 2023, it felt like Giannis had just won his first of many. Now the Bucks are teetering on the edge of contending status.

Winning one doesn’t guarantee anything, but winning two cements your place in history as a truly great team. No champion has repeated since the 2018 Warriors. Those Warriors were also pushed by the nobody-appreciates-in-us factor — mostly because of Durant’s addition to a squad that had just won a record 73 games in 2016.

Durant was fueled in part because he believed the basketball world owed him more credit for what he accomplished on the court. The Celtics have, like, two Durants between Tatum and Brown. Even after winning, they still have their doubters.

Winning is supposed to erase those doubts, as it did for Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. But sometimes that doesn’t happen, for various reasons.

Like those Warriors, the Celtics are victims of being too dominant. They won the East by 14 games and skipped through an injury-riddled playoff bracket. Their total decimation of a very good Dallas Mavericks team should have been enough to silence those doubts, but here we are.

Tatum, frankly, wasn’t good in the playoffs. He was benched by Team USA because he was struggling with his 3-point shot (something he chalked up to “mechanical issues,” per ESPN). According to the same report, Brown was left off Team USA because of concerns over his lack of ball movement and willingness to embrace a defensive-minded role. 

Few teams have a chance to win a championship. Fewer have a legitimate chance to repeat. The Celtics will enter this upcoming season as the favorites to win the title and become just the second team in 12 seasons to go back-to-back. It ain’t easy. And whatever can be used as fuel should go in the engine.

“It was a unique circumstance, something I (hadn’t) experienced before in my playing career,” Tatum said about his summer after winning a championship. “But I’m a believer that everything happens for a reason.”

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NBA news roundup: 

• The Memphis Grizzlies will retire Tony Allen’s No. 9 jersey on Saturday, March 15, at FedExForum, following a game against the Miami Heat. (Fun fact: The Brooklyn Nets will also retire a jersey, Vince Carter’s, during a game against the Heat this season.) The first 5,000 fans in attendance will receive a commemorative vinyl record showcasing memorable moments from Allen’s career. Very Memphis! Allen will join Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph as the third player in franchise history to have his number retired. Grit and grind shall never die.

• LA Clippers star Kawhi Leonard underwent a surgical procedure on his right knee in May and will be held out of drills when the team begins training camp next week, according to president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank. “We’re going to hold him back from drill work and really focus on strengthening, because the goal is to get him 100 percent so he can have a great season,” Frank said. “Not just this year, but for many years.” Leonard, 33, signed a three-year contract extension in January that takes him through the 2026-27 season.

• Lakers coach J.J Redick revealed his starting lineup in an interview with ESPN’s Zach Lowe. Redick said he will start “the lineup that went 23-10.” In other words: D’Angelo Russell, Austin Reaves, LeBron James, Rui Hachimura and Anthony Davis.