Jaylen Brown Issues Quick Response To Jayson Tatum’s Olympic Dud

The Boston Celtics captured their franchise's 18th championship before sending a trio of representatives to join USA Basketball in the 2024 Paris Olympics, which generated controversy for teammates Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.

First, Brown got snubbed from Team USA after Kawhi Leonard withdrew due to injury. Grant Hill, Steve Kerr and the rest of USA Basketball's coaching staff extended an (accepted) invitation instead to Celtics guard Derrick White, but that was just the beginning. Tatum, who Team USA welcomed with open arms, registered two DNPs as head coach Kerr refused to utilize the five-time All-Star twice, chalking up the benching to a "math problem." Watching from afar, Brown issued a short, but encouraging response to Tatum's Olympic fiasco.

"I don't have any comments right now," Brown said, per NBC Sports Bay Area. "... Jayson will be fine. Jayson Tatum will be fine, we will be fine."

This doesn't mark the first instance in which Tatum and Brown are entering a season while tasked with navigating outside noise. If anything, 2024-25 will be similar to 2023-24 except the Oct. 22 season opener will see the Tatum-Brown duo watch their first title banner raised in the TD Garden rafters. Whether it's due to the circumstances of teams missing a fully healthy roster in the postseason -- which the Celtics, too, were victims of -- or chalking Banner 18 up as a fluke Larry O'Brien snag, Tatum and Brown will undergo yet another never-ending battle with the outside narratives.

Weirdly enough, it should strengthen the Tatum-Brown bond. Both homegrown Celtics stars have endured the highs and lows together, understand what it takes to reach the mountaintop and already have proven themselves capable of overcoming the naysayers. Once the 2024-25 season begins, it's all within Tatum and Brown's control as the leaders of the team. They've already done it once. Doing it twice, and back-to-back, would make it significantly more difficult for the doubters -- and Team USA -- to continue questioning the future Hall of Fame duo any further.