Steph Curry was ready to ‘meet the moment’ at the Olympics in a way we’ve never seen before

PARIS — The ball bounced off the rim five times.

Five!

Stephen Curry came off Joel Embiid’s brick home screen late in the fourth quarter, as Serbian guard Ognjen Dobrić ran into the wall like he was Wile E. Coyote and fell to the ground, and the greatest shooter of all time fired a shot . shot from above that might as well have ended up on a craps table.

With just 144 seconds left to play in this FIBA-esque game where the clock is no one’s friend, the clock fell through the net to give Team USA a lead for the first time since midway through the first quarter. Ultimately, 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 match against France. Ultimately, we’ll really come to appreciate how close this team – 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. bronze in Athens and therefore inspired a reckoning within the national program.

STEVEN. CURRY. TEAM USA LEADS.#ParisOlympics | 📺 NBC, USA Network and Peacock pic.twitter.com/C4MUUl1v78

— NBC Olympic and Paralympic Games (@NBCOlympics) August 8, 2024

Phew.

I honestly don’t know what else to say.

When you cover international tournaments like the Olympics, there is a level of support from some non-US media for their respective teams that is, to be honest, quite off-putting. Some reporters applaud the press, 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 rush to the rim the way they did, and to anticipate the kind of criticism coming their way from the likes of yours truly when they fell short, was to silently hope that shots like Curry’s late 3 would fall. It’s a dynamic that simply doesn’t exist in the NBA, a dynamic that comes from the reality that you know one group of people so much better than another. And when Curry finished the job, stealing Bogdan Bogdanović’s pass and going coast-to-coast for a left-to-right layup that put Team USA ahead 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 later shared, Curry looked like a player pushing to get in. He scored in three of Team USA’s four Olympic Games, while averaging 7.3 points in the first four, with the only highlight of his first Olympic experience being the exhibition match against Serbia on July 17 in which he scored 24 points scored.

That was child’s play compared to this one. Curry was unconscious and finished with 36 points while hitting 12 of 19 shots and burying a total of nine of 14 3s.

Do you know how many times he’s hit that many threes on fourteen or fewer attempts in his entire storied career? Nine, according to Stathead.comand that includes a total of 1,103 games between the regular season and the playoffs (0.8 percent of the time). As a 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 where Team USA was so desperately in need of a hoops hero made it all the more epic.

“There were times in the last few weeks where I thought (Curry) was working too hard,” said Kerr, the Warriors coach who has had a front-row seat to Curry’s greatness for a decade. “He just cares so much, works so hard on his game all the time. We all know who he is, what he stands for, and I almost wanted to say to him, ‘Hey, take the day off.’ But it’s just not who he is. He works so hard, and he pushed himself into that game over the last few weeks with the work he put in.”

Curry, the 36-year-old who still managed to fully enjoy this Olympic experience from the floor, insisted the walls were not closing in.

“I didn’t feel any pressure at all because we were winning every game by 15, 20,” he said. “I know I influence the game in other ways. But about two minutes into tonight’s game, we realized I was getting looks, that they were playing a different kind of defense against us. Obviously they were scoring like crazy at the other end, so you just keep going and get lost in the moment.

“It’s what the game calls for. I shot three times in the last match (in a loss against Brazil) and I didn’t want to force it because that wasn’t what the match called for. So that’s the great thing about Team USA and FIBA ​​and this whole experience. Every game it was someone different.”

Still, hearing Curry’s side of the story was the realization that this role was a huge adjustment for him. While he shot just 35.7 percent from the field and 25 percent from three (5 of 20) entering the game against Serbia, he 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 the way they do with their NBA teams, often gets lost in the discussion.

“I didn’t have many chances,” Curry said plainly. “I haven’t shot the ball well all tournament, but it doesn’t affect 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 part of the ’04 team that America’s basketball program would rather everyone forget – threw the ball in the air and looked down to see Curry waiting to hug him . unbridled joy. It was a surreal scene in every way, the sight of these two NBA rivals sharing a memory no one could have imagined when their Cavs and Warriors teams battled in the Finals all those years.

So I asked James: where does this game rank in terms of pure emotion?

“I mean, it’s up there,” said James, the four-time champion and star of the Los Angeles Lakers whose triple-double (16 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists) played a big role in the victory. “I mean, I’m 39 years old and going into my 22nd season. I don’t know how many opportunities or moments I’m going to get like this, to be able to compete for something big and play in big games.”

This game was bigger than big. It was nothing short of magical, with the whole history of the players who matter most being left out 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 it before.

“Steph, man, that was a god performance,” said Durant, who forced Bogdanović into a crucial backcourt foul with 1:34 left and hit a nasty jumper with 34 seconds left to put Team USA up 93-89 . “Dang, (Curry) was tough. He felt like he was struggling the whole tournament, and we always said it could be someone different every night (every game). And tonight he showed up in a way that, man…

Durant could hardly find the words.

“Shot after shot, a steal and then finishing with the layup,” he said. “He was everywhere tonight. It was one of the best games I’ve ever seen him play.”

Required reading

(Top photo of Stephen Curry and Aleksa Avramović: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)