Gatorade Goofs Up, Mistakenly Joins Trolls Mocking Its Star Endorser Jayson Tatum For Being Benched

Team USA opened their Paris Olympics basketball gold hunt with a 110-84 win over Serbia, but for Jayson Tatum it wasn’t a good day. The Boston Celtics star was trolled for being benched throughout the game. The mockery initially stemmed from a parody account on X, called NBACentel which made fun of the 26-year-old with a ‘passing the cup’ reference.

They took a playful jab at Tatum by comparing him to Thanasis Antetokounmpo, infamous for his bench-warming role. The caption humorously read, “BREAKING: Jayson Tatum passed 300 Gatorade cups to his teammates, breaking Thanasis Antetokounmpo’s record”.

After this remark sparked widespread discussions, Gatorade fueled this drama further. They pulled Tatum‘s leg in the comments, responding, “Man of the people”. Even though the beverage company later deleted this response, the damage was done. NBACentel was quick to screenshot the comment to quote the initial post.

“Hey Jayson Tatum, you gonna take this from Gatorade?”.

Gatorade’s response caught everyone’s eye because of their close connection with Tatum. In 2016, Gatorade recognized Tatum as the Gatorade National Player of the Year. On top of this, the 5x All-Star became the face of their Gx Collab Bottles advertising campaign in 2023. This year, he extended the partnership and starred alongside Caitlin Clark in an ad narrated by Michael Jordan.

Following this unexpected response, the brand might have some explaining to do to Tatum. However, the situation was much simpler for coach Steve Kerr.

The reason why Tatum was benched

Soon after the game’s conclusion, Kerr explained that the star power within the roster left him with no choice but to bench Tatum. However, he indicated that the Celtics star could soon return to the lineup in upcoming games. The head coach of Team USA also outlined his limitations as the decision-maker, mentioning,

“Jayson handled it really well. I talked to him today before the game that it may play out this way just with Kevin [Durant] coming back and the lineups that I wanted to get to. But that’ll change. Jayson is gonna play… He is a total pro. He is first-team All-NBA for three years in a row. I felt like an idiot not playing him. But in a 40-minute game, you can’t play more than 10”.

Tatum has the stage set to silence his doubters. He must make the most of every opportunity he receives to represent the USA in the Olympics.