PARIS — The ball bounced off the rim five times.
Five!
Stephen Curry came off that brick-house screen from Joel Embiid late in the fourth quarter, with Serbian guard Ognjen Dobrić running into the wall as if he were Wile E. Coyote and crumpling to the floor, and the greatest shooter of all time fired a shot from up top that might as well have landed on a craps table.
With just 144 seconds left to play in this FIBA-style game where the clock is no one’s friend, it fell through the net to give Team USA a lead for the first time since midway through the first quarter. Eventually, Team USA pulled off one of the most stunning comebacks ever by somehow surviving a 17-point deficit against Serbia, 95-91, en route to the Olympic gold-medal game against France. Eventually, we’ll come to truly appreciate how close this squad — with names like LeBron James, Curry, Kevin Durant and so many more all-time talents on board — came to a level of infamy that would have surpassed the 2004 team that took bronze in Athens and inspired a reckoning within the national program as a result.
STEPHEN. CURRY. TEAM USA LEADS.#ParisOlympics | 📺 NBC, USA Network and Peacock pic.twitter.com/C4MUUl1v78
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 8, 2024
Phew.
I honestly don’t know what else to say.
When you cover international tournaments such as the Olympics, there is a level of support from some non-American media for their respective teams that is, to be honest, quite off-putting. Some reporters cheer on press row, which is considered a no-no in the United States, and others even shout disparaging things at American players like Joel Embiid (true story).
But to watch these Americans walk up to the edge like they did, and to anticipate the sort of scrutiny that was headed their way from people like yours truly if they fell short, was to quietly hope that shots like Curry’s late 3 would fall. It’s a dynamic that simply doesn’t exist in the NBA, one that’s born out of the reality that you know one group of humans so much better than the others. And when Curry finished the job, stealing that pass from Bogdan Bogdanović and going coast-to-coast for a left-to-right layup that put Team USA up 91-86 with 1:01 left, there was a sense of relief that the Golden State Warriors star had finally had a moment in his debut Summer Games.
As Team USA coach Steve Kerr shared afterward, Curry had the look of a player who was pressing coming in. He scored in single digits in three of Team USA’s four Olympic games while averaging a whopping 7.3 points in the first four, with the lone highlight of his first Olympics experience being the exhibition game against Serbia on July 17 in which he scored 24 points.
That was child’s play compared to this one. Curry was unconscious, finishing with 36 points while hitting 12 of 19 shots and burying nine of 14 3s in all.
You know how many times he has hit that many 3s on 14 or fewer attempts in his entire storied career? Nine, according to Stathead.com, and that includes 1,103 games in all between regular season and playoffs (0.8 percent of the time). As a relevant reminder, these games are 40 minutes long and not the 48-minute affairs we see in the NBA. The fact that it came in a game in which Team USA was in such desperate need of a hoops hero made it all the more epic.
“There were times these last couple weeks where I thought (Curry) was working too hard,” said Kerr, the Warriors coach who has had his front-row seat to Curry’s greatness for a decade. “He just cares so much, works so hard at his game constantly. We all know who he is, what he’s about, and I almost wanted to tell him, ‘Hey, take a day off,’ But it’s just not who he is. He works so hard, and he willed himself to that game tonight over the past couple weeks with the work he’s put in.”
Curry, the 36-year-old who had still managed to enjoy this Olympic experience to the fullest off the floor, insisted the walls weren’t closing in.
“I didn’t feel (pressure) at all, because we were winning by … 15, 20 every game,” he said. “I know that I affect the game in other ways. But about two minutes into the game tonight, we realized that I’m getting looks, that they were playing a different type of defense on us. Obviously, they were scoring crazy on the other end, so you just keep going and get lost in the moment.
“It’s whatever the game calls for. I shot three times last game (in a rout of Brazil), and I wasn’t looking to force it, because that’s not what the game called for. So that’s the beauty of Team USA and FIBA and this whole experience. Every game has been somebody different.”
Still, to hear Curry’s side of the story was to realize this role has been a massive adjustment for him. While he entered the Serbia game shooting just 35.7 percent from the field and 25 percent from three (5 of 20), he had also averaged just seven shots per game. That context, the reality that this team makes it so challenging for so many great players to find a way to play like they do with their NBA squads, is often lost in the discussion.
“I haven’t had many opportunities,” Curry said so plainly. “I haven’t shot the ball well the whole tournament, but it doesn’t waver your confidence to meet the moment.”
And did he ever.
When one of the greatest basketball games of all time was over, James — who was a part of the ’04 team the USA Basketball program would rather everyone forget — threw the ball into the air and looked down to find Curry waiting to hug him with unbridled joy. It was a surreal scene in every way, the sight of these two NBA rivals sharing the kind of memory no one could have imagined when their Cavs and Warriors teams were battling for all those years in the finals.
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So, I asked James, where does this game rank in terms of sheer emotion?
“I mean, it’s up there,” said James, the four-time champion and Los Angeles Lakers star whose triple-double (16 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists) played a massive part in the win. “I mean, I’m 39 years old, going into my 22nd season. I don’t know how many opportunities or moments I’m gonna get like this, to be able to compete for something big and play in big games.”
This game was bigger than big. It was downright magical, with all this history tied up between the players who matter most falling by the wayside for the sake of their national pride. Just listen to Kevin Durant, the Phoenix Suns star who won two championships with Curry in Golden State and sounded like he’d never seen anything like this before.
“Steph, man, that was a God-like like performance,” said Durant, who forced Bogdanović into a crucial backcourt violation with 1:34 left and hit a nasty jumper with 34 seconds remaining that put Team USA up 93-89. “Dang, (Curry) was tough. He felt like he was struggling throughout the whole tournament, and we always said each night it could be somebody different (every game). And tonight, he showed up in a way that, man…”
Durant almost couldn’t find the words.
“Shot after shot, getting a steal and then finishing with the layup,” he said. “He was everywhere tonight. It was one of the greatest games I’ve ever seen him play.”
Required Reading
(Top photo of Stephen Curry and Aleksa Avramović: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)