Steph Curry has won four NBA championships, two MVP awards and a Finals MVP. He’s quite literally changed modern basketball with his 3-point proficiency and is still going strong in his 17th NBA season. Yet whenever the book is written on his basketball career, the very first line will have to include what he did in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
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The 1994 U.S. Olympic basketball team was christened the Dream Team, but 2024 was when it came true, as it gave basketball fans their first glimpse outside of an All-Star Game of Steph and his longtime nemesis LeBron James teaming up. To say that the Olympic tournament didn’t disappoint would be a massive understatement, because unlike in ’94, the rest of the world was full of its own elite talent.
It took everything that Team USA had to win another gold medal, and nobody contributed more than Steph, especially in crunch time of the gold medal game against France. Basketball fans have seen Chef Curry cook up dishes nobody has ever seen before, but this was above and beyond that, as he was completely unconscious with his shooting, even letting it fly over the best defender in the world, Victor Wembanyama.
Steph and LeBron reminisced over that gold medal win during their recent Mind the Game conversation, with both reflecting on the absurd levels of confidence and shotmaking on display. “I actually wanted [LeBron] to go downhill, maybe get to the free throw line, at least settle us down, because I know he’s great at that,” Steph remembered thinking after France cut the USA lead to 3.
“When he threw that pass, muscle memory just took over,” he admitted. “I saw Yabusele bite on the left jab, and once you see that, it’s just reactionary, and you make it. At that point, you’re just living with it.”
After he drained that triple, a plan was formed to get him more looks. Though Steph took it to extremes when he launched it over the double-team of Nic Batum and Evan Fournier, as LeBron and Kevin Durant, stood wide open with their arms raised at the other side of the court.
“I’m still laughing at the picture,” Steph said, while cracking up and mimicking Bron and KD with his hands up.
“I can’t believe you froze us out like that and shot that crazy s***,” LeBron said.
Steph ran down how the ball kept finding him in those final minutes, and they laughed again when talking about his shot over Wemby that basically clinched the gold. “He didn’t see the rim on the last one,” LeBron said, while Steph admitted he didn’t play defense the next two possessions because he was so busy celebrating. “I covered some ground,” he said about his patented “Night night” celebration.
LeBron summed up the way basketball fans felt about finally seeing the much-anticipated collaboration. “It was one of the best experiences,” he said. “People ask about it all the time, like I finally got the opportunity to play with Steph, what was it like? Everything and more, it was perfect.”
It was perfect, indeed.
