PARIS — The ball bounced off the 5-rim.
five!
Late in the fourth quarter, Stephen Curry broke off Joel Embiid’s brick screen, Serbian guard Ognen Dobrik ran into the wall like he was a Coyote, fell to the ground, and the greatest shooter of all time took a shot from above that looked like it landed on a craps table.
In this FIBA-style game where the clock is of no help to anyone, Team USA took the lead for the first time since the middle of the first quarter when they swung the net with only 144 seconds left in the game. Team USA eventually pulled off one of the most incredible comebacks of all time, coming from down 17 points to Serbia to win 95-91 and advance to the Olympic gold medal game against France. In the end, we will truly appreciate how close a squad with names like LeBron James, Curry, Kevin Durant and some of the greatest talent of all time came to surpassing the infamous 2004 Athens bronze medal-winning team. The result was a reckoning with the national program.
Stephen Curry. Team USA is in the lead.#ParisOlympics | 📺 NBC, USA Network and Peacock pic.twitter.com/C4MUUl1v78
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 8, 2024
phew.
Honestly, I can’t think of anything more to say.
When covering international events like the Olympics, there is a level of support that some non-American media outlets have for each team, which is quite frankly quite unpleasant. Some reporters cheer on media behavior that is taboo in the United States, while others shout derogatory remarks about American athletes like Joel Embiid (true story).
But to see these Americans walk to the edge like that, and to anticipate the kind of scrutiny that people like me would place on them when they missed a shot, was to quietly hope that shots like Curry’s late 3-pointer would make it, a dynamic that doesn’t exist in the NBA, born of the reality that one group knows one way or another much better than the other. And when Curry finished the job, stealing a pass from Bogdan Bogdanovic and going coast-to-coast for a layup that gave Team USA a 91-86 lead with 1:01 left, there was a sense of relief that the Golden State Warriors star was finally having his moment in his debut summer game.
As Team USA coach Steve Kerr later shared, Curry looked like a pressure player. He scored in single figures in three of Team USA’s four Olympic games, averaging a whopping 7.3 points in the first four. The only highlight of his first Olympic experience was a 24-point performance in a friendly against Serbia on July 17.
This was child’s play compared to this. Curry was unconscious and finished with 36 points, hitting 12 of 19 shots and 9 of 14 3-pointers.
How many times in his legendary career did he make that many 3-pointers on 14 attempts or fewer? Nine, according to Stathead.com, and that includes 1,103 games between the regular season and the playoffs (0.8%). As a relevant reminder, these games are 40 minutes long, not the 48-minute games you see in the NBA. It makes it all the more epic that Team USA came out of a game in desperate need of basketball heroics.
“There were times over the last couple of weeks when I thought (Curry) was working too hard,” said Kerr, the Warriors coach who has witnessed Curry’s greatness firsthand for a decade. “He really cares, he works hard on his game constantly. We all know who he is and what he does, and I would have said, ‘Hey, take a day off,’ but that’s not him. He works really hard, and the effort he’s put in over the last couple of weeks has earned him a spot in tonight’s game.”
Curry, 36, has enjoyed his Olympic experience off the court, but insists the walls aren’t closing in.
“I didn’t feel (the pressure) at all because we were winning every game by 15, 20 points,” he said. “I know I affect the game in different ways, but today, about two minutes into the game, I realized I was getting attention and they were playing a different type of defense. Obviously, they were scoring like crazy on the other end, so you just keep going and get into the moment.
“It’s what the game calls for. I took three shots in the last game (the Brazil loss) and I didn’t try to force it because that’s not what the game calls for. That’s the beauty of Team USA and FIBA and this whole experience. Every game is someone else.”
Still, listening to Curry, I realized that this role was a huge adjustment for him. He shot 35.7 percent from the field and 25 percent (5-of-20) from 3-point range in the Serbia game, but he averaged only seven shots per game. That context, the reality that this team is challenging so many great players to find a way to play like an NBA team, is often overlooked in the discussion.
“I didn’t get a lot of opportunities,” Curry said bluntly. “I didn’t shoot the ball all tournament, but I’m confident that I’m going to get to that moment.”
And he did.
After one of the greatest basketball games of all time, James, a member of the ’04 team that the NBA program wants everyone to forget, tossed the ball into the air and looked down to see Curry waiting to embrace him with uncontrollable joy. It was a surreal scene in every sense of the word, a sight of these two NBA rivals sharing the kind of memories no one could have imagined when the Cavaliers and Warriors competed in the Finals for years.
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So I asked James where this game ranks in terms of pure emotion.
“I mean, it’s really great,” said James, a four-time champion and Los Angeles Lakers star whose triple-double (16 points, 12 rebounds, 10 assists) was a big part of the victory. “I mean, I’m 39 years old, going into my 22nd season. I don’t know how many times I get a chance or a moment like this. To be able to compete for something big and play in a big game.”
This game was more than just a big game. It was magical to see all this history intertwined between the most important players, and to see them fall by the wayside for national pride. Listen to Phoenix Suns star Kevin Durant, who won two championships with Curry in Golden State. He sounded like he had never seen anything like it before.
“Steph, my God, that was a godly performance,” Durant said. He forced Bogdanovic into a crucial backcourt violation with 1:34 left and made a powerful jumper with 34 seconds left to put Team USA up 93-89. “Damn, (Curry) was strong. He seemed to struggle all tournament long, and we said he could be a different person every night (every game). And tonight, he was just, oh my…”
Durant could hardly find the words.
“He made shots, got steals and finished with layups,” he said. “He was everywhere tonight. It was one of the greatest games I’ve ever seen him play.”
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(Top photo of Stephen Curry and Aleksa Avramović: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
