PARIS — The ball bounced off the rim 5 instances.
5!
Stephen Curry got here off that brick-house display screen from Joel Embiid late within the fourth quarter, with Serbian guard Ognjen Dobrić working into the wall as if he had been Wile E. Coyote and crumpling to the ground, and the best shooter of all time fired a shot from up prime that may as properly have landed on a craps desk.
With simply 144 seconds left to play on this FIBA-style sport the place the clock is nobody’s pal, it fell by the web to provide Group USA a lead for the primary time since halfway by the primary quarter. Finally, Group USA pulled off one of the beautiful comebacks ever by by some means surviving a 17-point deficit towards Serbia, 95-91, en path to the Olympic gold-medal sport towards France. Finally, we’ll come to actually admire how shut this squad — with names like LeBron James, Curry, Kevin Durant and so many extra all-time abilities on board — got here to a stage of infamy that might have surpassed the 2004 group that took bronze in Athens and impressed a reckoning inside the nationwide program in consequence.
STEPHEN. CURRY. TEAM USA LEADS.#ParisOlympics | 📺 NBC, USA Community and Peacock pic.twitter.com/C4MUUl1v78
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 8, 2024
Phew.
I actually don’t know what else to say.
If you cowl worldwide tournaments such because the Olympics, there’s a stage of help from some non-American media for his or her respective groups that’s, to be sincere, fairly off-putting. Some reporters cheer on press row, which is taken into account a no-no in the US, and others even shout disparaging issues at American gamers like Joel Embiid (true story).
However to observe these Individuals stroll as much as the sting like they did, and to anticipate the form of scrutiny that was headed their means from individuals like yours really in the event that they fell quick, was to quietly hope that pictures like Curry’s late 3 would fall. It’s a dynamic that merely doesn’t exist within the NBA, one which’s born out of the fact that one group of people so a lot better than the others. And when Curry completed the job, stealing that move from Bogdan Bogdanović and going coast-to-coast for a left-to-right layup that put Group USA up 91-86 with 1:01 left, there was a way of aid that the Golden State Warriors star had lastly had a second in his debut Summer season Video games.
As Group USA coach Steve Kerr shared afterward, Curry had the look of a participant who was urgent coming in. He scored in single digits in three of Group USA’s 4 Olympic video games whereas averaging a whopping 7.3 factors within the first 4, with the lone spotlight of his first Olympics expertise being the exhibition sport towards Serbia on July 17 during which he scored 24 factors.
That was little one’s play in comparison with this one. Curry was unconscious, ending with 36 factors whereas hitting 12 of 19 pictures and burying 9 of 14 3s in all.
You know the way many instances he has hit that many 3s on 14 or fewer makes an attempt in his whole storied profession? 9, in response to Stathead.com, and that features 1,103 video games in all between common season and playoffs (0.8 p.c of the time). As a related reminder, these video games are 40 minutes lengthy and never the 48-minute affairs we see within the NBA. The truth that it got here in a sport during which Group USA was in such determined want of a hoops hero made it all of the extra epic.
“There have been instances these final couple weeks the place I assumed (Curry) was working too exhausting,” stated Kerr, the Warriors coach who has had his front-row seat to Curry’s greatness for a decade. “He simply cares a lot, works so exhausting at his sport always. Everyone knows who he’s, what he’s about, and I nearly wished to inform him, ‘Hey, take a time without work,’ But it surely’s simply not who he’s. He works so exhausting, and he willed himself to that sport tonight over the previous couple weeks with the work he’s put in.”
Curry, the 36-year-old who had nonetheless managed to take pleasure in this Olympic expertise to the fullest off the ground, insisted the partitions weren’t closing in.
“I didn’t really feel (stress) in any respect, as a result of we had been successful by … 15, 20 each sport,” he stated. “I do know that I have an effect on the sport in different methods. However about two minutes into the sport tonight, we realized that I’m getting appears, that they had been taking part in a distinct kind of protection on us. Clearly, they had been scoring loopy on the opposite finish, so that you simply preserve going and get misplaced within the second.
“It’s regardless of the sport requires. I shot 3 times final sport (in a rout of Brazil), and I wasn’t trying to drive it, as a result of that’s not what the sport referred to as for. In order that’s the fantastic thing about Group USA and FIBA and this entire expertise. Each sport has been any individual completely different.”
Nonetheless, to listen to Curry’s facet of the story was to comprehend this position has been an enormous adjustment for him. Whereas he entered the Serbia sport capturing simply 35.7 p.c from the sector and 25 p.c from three (5 of 20), he had additionally averaged simply seven pictures per sport. That context, the fact that this group makes it so difficult for thus many nice gamers to discover a option to play like they do with their NBA squads, is usually misplaced within the dialogue.
“I haven’t had many alternatives,” Curry stated so plainly. “I haven’t shot the ball properly the entire event, however it doesn’t waver your confidence to fulfill the second.”
And did he ever.
When one of many biggest basketball video games of all time was over, James — who was part of the ’04 group the USA Basketball program would relatively everybody overlook — threw the ball into the air and appeared down to seek out Curry ready to hug him with unbridled pleasure. It was a surreal scene in each means, the sight of those two NBA rivals sharing the type of reminiscence nobody may have imagined when their Cavs and Warriors groups had been battling for all these years within the finals.
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So, I requested James, the place does this sport rank by way of sheer emotion?
“I imply, it’s up there,” stated James, the four-time champion and Los Angeles Lakers star whose triple-double (16 factors, 12 rebounds and 10 assists) performed an enormous half within the win. “I imply, I’m 39 years outdated, going into my twenty second season. I don’t know what number of alternatives or moments I’m gonna get like this, to have the ability to compete for one thing massive and play in massive video games.”
This sport was larger than massive. It was downright magical, with all this historical past tied up between the gamers who matter most dropping by the wayside for the sake of their nationwide satisfaction. Simply hearken to Kevin Durant, the Phoenix Suns star who gained two championships with Curry in Golden State and appeared like he’d by no means seen something like this earlier than.
“Steph, man, that was a God-like like efficiency,” stated Durant, who compelled Bogdanović into a vital backcourt violation with 1:34 left and hit a nasty jumper with 34 seconds remaining that put Group USA up 93-89. “Dang, (Curry) was robust. He felt like he was struggling all through the entire event, and we at all times stated every night time it could possibly be any individual completely different (each sport). And tonight, he confirmed up in a means that, man…”
Durant nearly couldn’t discover the phrases.
“Shot after shot, getting a steal after which ending with the layup,” he stated. “He was in every single place tonight. It was one of many biggest video games I’ve ever seen him play.”
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(High picture of Stephen Curry and Aleksa Avramović: Ezra Shaw / Getty Pictures)
