Celtics Awkwardly Cold Shoulder Steve Kerr After Revenge Win Over Warriors

Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr must’ve felt as though Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics had forgotten about this past summer’s Paris Olympics.

Well, that seemed far from the case following the end of Boston’s mammoth 125-85 win over Golden State on Martin Luther King Day. Once the final buzzer sounded at Chase Center and both teams greeted one another on their way off the court, Kerr was excluded — and it was awkward.

Tatum and Warriors star Stephen Curry shared a brief 1-on-1 discussion while Jaylen Brown stood in the background and TNT’s postgame broadcast captured Kerr hovering his way into the frame. The 59-year-old slowly attempted to get in on the friendly chit-chat, only to receive the cold shoulder treatment like a school child getting excluded from the lunch table by all the cool kids.

Brown made direct eye contact with Kerr and immediately looked away, giving the former USA Basketball head coach the sign of rejection to walk away. Kerr, quickly catching onto the tell-tale sign, backed off and walked away from the group.

Kerr, the clipboard chief of Team USA’s gold medal run, sparked controversy when he benched Tatum twice in the team’s six total Olympic matchups. USA Basketball also rejected Tatum’s running mate, Brown, after Los Angeles Clippers star Kawhi Leonard withdrew from competing due to a knee injury, and instead gave the vacant spot to Celtics guard Derrick White. Brown, months prior, expressed his desire to represent Team USA and didn’t get the call, even after being named MVP of the 2024 NBA Finals.

The summer of disrespect for the Tatum-Brown tandem, fresh off a championship, provided an outlet for motivation for the duo and Kerr felt the brunt of their fuel Monday evening. Tatum and Brown combined to score 39 points and dropped Golden State to .500 at 21-21, good for 11th in the Western Conference.

Meanwhile, the C’s improved to 30-13 and became the third team in the NBA to reach the 30-win plateau this season, joining the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

The win also provided Boston with a much-needed sigh of relief as the team shot 41.7% from 3-point range — and held the Warriors to 26.4% shooting from three — and ran Golden State off its own floor. Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla yanked Tatum, Brown and Kristaps Porzingis off the floor at the end of the third quarter and unloaded the bench as the Warriors had no life even with 12 minutes left in regulation.

Boston entered the battle losers in four of its last 10 games, a stretch in which the team ranked a modest 18th in 3-point shooting (35.5%).

“You gotta love it, just because it’s hard to win in this league. You can’t take it for granted,” Brown told reporters, per CLNS Media. “I think we’ve had to fight and it hasn’t been as easy as we would’ve liked and I think that’s good for us. It’s not supposed to be and it just shows you how hard it is to win night to night. You can’t take winning for granted. You can’t skip steps and details, and us losing has been reminders of that.”

The four-game road trip continues for the Celtics who will next face the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday night at 10:30 p.m. ET.