Wembanyama leads rivals hoping to deny James and the US juggernaut

A positively stacked United States team headlined by LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Joel Embiid and the Olympic debutant Stephen Curry would expect to be hot favourites to win a fourth straight gold when the men’s basketball final tips off on the penultimate day of the Games in Bercy. Quelle surprise, non?

Only getting to this gold medal game – and winning it – won’t be the fait accompli of years past. A cluster of rivals laden with NBA stars including Serbia (the three-time MVP Nikola Jokic), Canada (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander), Australia (Josh Giddey) and Germany (Dennis Schröder) are each capable of offering stiff resistance to the Americans, especially under Fiba rules. But the gnarliest challenge will be posed by France, buoyed up by rollicking home support and a front line 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.

The 20-year-old with an eight-foot wingspan and the agility of much smaller players, who was dubbed a “once-in-a-millennium” talent even before entering the NBA with the San Antonio Spurs last year and winning rookie of the year honours by a rare unanimous vote, will be one of the poster boys for France’s Olympic team and the star attraction of a group who are not there to make up numbers. Under the steady hand of Vincent Collet – who also coached Wembanyama when he played for Metropolitans 92 in the French top flight – Les Bleus are an athletic side who have come close at major tournaments in recent years including in Tokyo, where they handed Team USA their first Olympic loss in 17 years only to suffer a five-point defeat when they ran it back for the gold.

But make no mistake: the Americans are hotly tipped on merit. The roster has size, scoring, defence and star power to burn. Four of the projected starters – James (four), Curry (two), Durant (one) and Embiid (one) – have combined to win eight NBA MVP awards. Jayson Tatum, Jrue Holiday, Devin Booker and Bam Adebayo all return from the gold medal-winning team in Tokyo. Anthony Edwards and Tyrese Haliburton have emerged as two of the league’s brightest young stars. All but one of the 12 players were selected as All-Stars this season while the other, Holiday, was named to the all-defensive first team. They will be coached by Steve Kerr, no stranger to managing gobs of individual talent after helming the Golden State Warriors to four NBA titles in his 10-year stint and serving as an assistant on Gregg Popovich’s bench at the last Olympics.

The ringleader is James, arguably the biggest star of the roughly 10,500 athletes in Paris, who was a teenager on the US squad that stumbled to the bronze at the 2004 Athens Games, prompting a wholesale rethink of USA Basketball that made it more appealing for NBA players to participate in the Olympics. Now 39 and in search of a third gold, he is still among the world’s best while competing against players who were in diapersnappies when he was already a household name.

Somehow, a far more mortal lock may happen the next day when a US women’s team led by Diana Taurasi, A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart are expected to cruise to an eighth consecutive gold on the same floor. Drawing from a talent pool so laughably deep that USA Basketball couldn’t even find a roster spot for the crossover phenomenon Caitlin Clark, the USA women are arguably the most dominant team in world sport today, having not lost an Olympic game since 1992 or in any tournament since 2006 in which they have fielded professionals.