Steph Curry could admit he was feeling the heat. The USA men’s basketball team were trailing Serbia and three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić by 13 points in the fourth quarter of their Olympic semi-final on Thursday night after falling behind by as many as 17 in the first half, their quest for a fifth straight gold medal hanging by a thread.
It was Curry’s first encounter with the unique pressure faced by a USA Basketball program with an all-time record of 142-5 in the Olympics, including 35-1 since their notorious flop at the Athens Olympics two decades ago. Win and it’s business as usual. Lose and risk a permanent blotch of infamy. Just ask LeBron James, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer and two-time Olympic gold medalist who has never entirely outrun the LeBronze nickname he earned for his peripheral role as a teenage backup on the US squad that finished third after shock losses to Puerto Rico, Australia and Argentina.
“I came into this experience thinking that this would be my one and only time to play in the Olympics and experience this stage,” Curry said on Friday. “I didn’t want to be on the [first USA] team since 2004 that didn’t make it to the gold medal game.
“So all that stuff you’re thinking about while you’re still trying to have fun playing the game you know. It’s an interesting dynamic because we all signed up for this, to accomplish a mission and we’re one game away from doing it and we were threatened like crazy for 30-odd minutes yesterday [against Serbia] until we finally figured it out.”
In what US teammate Kevin Durant described as a “godlike performance”, Curry poured in 36 points against Serbia, one short of Team USA’s single-game Olympic record held by Carmelo Anthony, including the three-pointer that handed the Americans the lead for good with 2:24 left in the 95-91 victory. From the brink of a humiliating defeat as overwhelming favorites, the Americans are now back on course and 40 minutes away from international basketball’s ultimate prize.
It won’t get easier for the United States in Saturday night’s gold medal game against France, who saw off a stingy Germany side in Thursday’s first semi-final. Les Bleus are led by a frontline featuring 7ft 1in Rudy Gobert, the four-time NBA defensive player of the year, and 7ft 4in Victor Wembanyama, perhaps the most promising young player since James entered the professional ranks more than two decades ago. They are an athletic group loaded with NBA talent who have come close at major tournaments in recent years including in Tokyo, where they handed the United States their first Olympic loss in 17 years only to suffer a five-point defeat when they ran it back for the gold.
Of course this US team is far different, tricked out with future inner-circle Hall of Famers like Curry, James and Durant, returning Tokyo gold medalists (Bam Adebayo, Devin Booker, Jrue Holiday and Jayson Tatum) and superstars-in-waiting (Anthony Edwards, Tyrese Haliburton). All but one of the 12 players were selected as NBA All-Stars this season while the other, Holiday, was named to the league’s all-defensive first team. But in a one-off under Fiba rules with a nation of 68m souls behind them, the hosts will fancy their chances.
“For us, all of us staff, players, it’s a dream to be able to play the finals in Paris,” said France coach Vincent Collet, who also coached Wembanyama when he played for Metropolitans 92 in the French top flight. “That’s what we said before the [semi-final]. I asked the players, ‘Are you going to let the German team steal the finals from your hands?’ They were answering, ‘No, no way, no way, we die on the court, no way.’”
For all the specific threats presented by Jokić and the tightly knit Serbian team, the Americans understand that France will pose a far different challenge amid a uniquely hostile environment inside the cauldron-like Bercy Arena, where the hosts will look to become the first side to win men’s basketball gold on home soil since the United States in 1996. Surely it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the curious Wembanyama, who in one night could not only join Léon Marchand, Teddy Riner, Antoine Dupont and the Brothers Lebrun as emblems of the Paris Olympics, but encroach the broader folk-hero pantheon of Cerdan, Hinault, Killy and Zidane.
“We’re expecting them to play the game of their life,” Curry said. “They’re going to have the home-court adrenaline, they’re riding a big momentum after these last two games. We’ve got to expect them to play great, but we expect that from ourselves as well.”
Joel Embiid, who scored 19 points against Serbia, can expect the worst of it. The USA center has been getting jeered by the crowds with every touch since the tournament started over his decision to play for the United States instead of France. For his part he’s relished the negative reception: Embiid was the last player off the court after Friday’s narrow escape, taunting the crowd repeatedly with the DX ‘suck it’ chop, the same stunt that earned him a fine last NBA season.
“I’m going to enjoy it,” Embiid said. “They’re going to boo me, I’m going to go back at them and tell them to suck it. It’s going to be fun.”
France have completely reinvented themselves after a flat performance during the group stage, moving Isaïa Cordinier and Guerschon Yabusele into the starting five and embracing a more physical style. That was never more evident in Thursday’s narrow 73-69 win. While their flashier NBA stars were limited to 9-of-32 shooting by the Germans’ disciplined team defense, it was the less heralded Yabusele and Cordinier whose combined 33 points made the difference.
“The will to improve, the will to sacrifice for your team, the will to do the next pass, the next play for your teammate, that was always there but we needed time,” said Wembanyama of France’s steady improvement. “The intention was always good.”
USA coach Steve Kerr said the team got back to the hotel so late after Thursday night’s game that he only had time to watch a replay of the France game and the first half of the Serbia semi-final before finishing the tape on Friday morning, when preparations for the gold medal game began in earnest with a coaches’ meeting and a talk with the players on their recovery day.
“It’s been very impressive to see their team evolve, change styles on the fly,” Kerr said. “They’re very physical. They’re playing extremely hard, that’s what jumps out on tape is just how hard they’re playing at both ends. We have to be prepared for that physicality and that force. And we have to not only match that but exceed that, and that’s the challenge.”
For Curry, the four-time NBA champion back in the national team for the first time in a decade, the semi-final scare offered the a pitch-perfect test run for what awaits on Saturday night.
“I think last night will help us, having to deal with the adversity at the level that we did, because we know the crowd is going to be loud and obnoxious for them, as they should be,” he said. “We’ve got to be able to handle the emotions of it all.
“I’m sure each one of us can probably think of a building that you’ve gone into in your career, like a hostile environment where nobody likes you and nobody wants to see you. We’ve got to channel that energy and just be ready for whatever happens.”
