We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of arguably one of the greatest basketball games ever played, the 2024 Paris Olympic gold medal match between Team USA and Team France. The Americans prevailed, thanks in large part to the heroic shooting efforts of Steph Curry and the leadership of LeBron James and Kevin Durant. But they won gold by the skin of their teeth, first by engineering an epic comeback against Nikola Jokic and Serbia in the semifinals, then by doing the same against Victor Wembanyama and France.
Advertisement
The 2028 Olympics will be played on American soil, but will that home court advantage be enough to help Team USA win another gold? Richard Jefferson isn’t so sure.
On the latest episode of the Road Trippin’ podcast, Jefferson gave his honest assessment of what he expects to happen.
“The US will not win gold in Los Angeles, California. Boom,” he said when asked to give his hot take. The reasons are manifold, but at the top of the list is the fact that the biggest stars on the team are all aging out.
Curry, LeBron and KD were all ranked in the top 13 of Bleacher Report’s recent “Top 100 NBA Players of All Time, Ranked” article, but with a combined age right now of 113 years old, it seems exceedingly likely that none of that trio will be wearing red, white and blue by time the Olympic torch is lit again.
“Did you see it took a Herculean effort for us, it took our greatest basketball players, to beat a team that had one All-Star in Serbia and had no All-Stars in France?” Jefferson asked. “Without KD, without Steph, without LeBron, without Embiid, without the Avengers, we would not have won the gold medal.”
“It took Steph to have one of the greatest basketball games we’ve ever seen, one of the greatest fourth quarters. LeBron James … Jayson Tatum couldn’t even play, our team was so good. I’m saying fast forward three years, and we’re in L.A., I don’t know that the U.S. team will be favored to win the gold medal in America.”
Jefferson isn’t just concerned about the state of American hoops; he’s also looking at what’s happening internationally, especially in France. “If you look at a more-developed Wemby, you look at Risacher, you look at some of these young players coming up from France over the next three to four years,” he said to prove his point.
Channing Frye attempted to push back by saying players like Cade Cunningham, Anthony Edwards and Evan Mobley could take the reins. He’s right that the US will still have the deepest roster of talent, but will it be enough without three of the greatest players of all time, especially if Wemby evolves into the world-devouring titan everyone expects him to become?
Jefferson’s final point, that the US won’t have a dominant big man by then, as Joel Embiid and Anthony Davis age out, is well-taken. Evan Mobley and Bam Adebayo are All-Star-caliber players, but will they be able to stop Wemby or Nikola Jokic from going wild? That could be the key that decides it all.
In the MCU, most of the original Avengers may be gone, but Thunderbolts proved that with the right successors, all is not lost. Team USA has to hope that guys like Ant-Man and Devin Booker continue to ascend, so that they’re worthy of the mantle they’ll inherit. If they do, the Americans will have a shot. If they don’t, they’ll find out why “vengeance” was originally a French word.
