Anthony Edwards’ overflowing confidence was the marquee of Starting 5. The young blood’s trash talk to the reigning champion though would have us using the side-eye monkey GIF for a long time. As it turns out, Jayson Tatum took note of what Ant said about it and he had his own way of responding to it. One of them was beating the Minnesota Timberwolves 107-105 today. The other was during the Paris Olympics. You know, when Steve Kerr had Tatum warming the bench? Understandably the Celtics star had enough fire building up to respond to Antman.

After tonight’s game in TD Garden, Tatum was asked if he saw the moment in the Netflix documentary when Ant questioned Tatum’s elite status. “Y’all talking about ‘best player in the league,’” Edwards said a year ago as shown Starting 5. “Y’all tripping.”

Tatum described some of the Team USA camraderie where a little trash talk got a pass. “Yeah, you know we had two good games against each other last year and obviously spent the summer with each other in the Olympics. You know I love ant, he hell of a player, hell of a competitor, you know he talks a lot and he had a lot to say this summer about you know the games we played against them last year and you know getting excited to play against us this year. So I mean you enjoy playing against the other best players in the league. It’s always fun and competitive.”

It was not fun watching Tatum get grossly underplayed in Paris and Steve Kerr still faces a lot of backlash as the head coach of Team USA. Edwards, who celebrated his 23rd birthday in Paris, played in six games and was on fire. In fact, Starting 5 shows, Ant was pretty excited in the lead-up to it and demonstrated with his trash talk. Tatum indicated he was willing to give it a pass since the then-22 year was enjoying a rare moment he beat the Celtics.

“I mean, I saw it,” Tatum said. “We were talking a lot of s–t to each other during the summer. I’ve got a pretty good record against Minnesota in my career. That was the one time they beat us so far. But it’s fun. They’re a really good team. They’re well-coached. They’ve got some talent over there.”

In fact, Tatum sounded like Ant’s in-your-face confidence made their matchups interesting when he said, “I’m certain, for the near future, games against those guys will be really fun ones.” At least something made the Olympics exciting for JT.

Jaysom Tatum leaves disappointment behind

Jayson Tatum was fresh off his first championship when he suited up for Team USA. But all he played was a measly 20.5 minutes. He still had a good record with 15.2 points, 3.3 rebounds, 1.2 assists, and 1.2 blocks per game across six games. Ant kept the Team USA atmosphere exciting which Tatum experienced for the first time as his teammate.

It’s a different story when they’re opponents. Their last few matchups this year alone have been nailbiters. Like Tatum said, he does have a good record against the Wolves. After a poor performance on Friday against Washington, he bounced back against Minnesota with 26 points, going 5-for-12 from 3-point range. Edwards outscored him and his team with 29 points at the end of the game.

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But Boston curbed every attempt at comeback. Which led to the Celtics’ narrow win. Now Ant needs to bring on the trash talk for the next game.