For all the amazing things we’ve seen in the sport of basketball, whether it was Bird vs. Magic or MJ shoving Byron Russell out of the way to hit that clincher against the Jazz or Christian Laettner playing the perfect game against Kentucky in the 1992 Elite Eight, it’s possible we’ve never witnessed anything quite on the order of what occurred with 90 seconds left in Saturday’s gold medal men’s game between the United States and France.
U.S. guard Steph Curry had drawn a double-team in the backcourt and threw a pass to the opposite wing to superstar teammate Kevin Durant. Given the shot-clock circumstance, Durant had almost an imperative to consider generating a shot for himself to help protect his team’s excruciating six-point lead.
Yeah, but that wasn’t happening.
As soon as Durant caught the ball and saw defender Evan Fournier dashing back toward him, Durant gave the ball back to Curry. KD, who has made 50 percent of his NBA shots and 39 percent of his NBA threes and has been even more accurate in international play, passed up a big shot. Because he’d seen what all of us had seen.
This was Steph’s moment. His golden moment.
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What Curry did in the final 3 minutes -- after he’d committed a lazy turnover and then missed a short jumper and was complicit in the U.S. lead dwindling all the way to a single possession – was the sort of stuff we see in Marvel movies, a feat that only seemed plausible through the use of CGI.
He made four 3-pointers in what was left of the game, each more ridiculous than the last, each mandatory if the U.S. were to remain ahead. The last of them came with 35 seconds left, with multiple defenders challenging him. It was launched toward the ceiling of the Bercy Arena but came down directly through the net. The US survived 98-87 , with a golden dagger we're not likely to forget.
Throughout this team’s adventure, since gathering in Las Vegas just after the July 4 holiday, it always had seemed LeBron James was the player who would not let them lose. Not on this day. It was Curry who seized those final minutes against an inspired group of Frenchmen and declared, “Je ne nous permettrai pas de perdre.”
OK, so he didn’t say it in French. He didn’t say “I will not allow us to lose” in English, either. He said it in the language of the game.
“Obviously, those were big shots,” Curry told NBC Sports. “We’re up 3, to put us up 6, that kind of settled everything, and then the rhythm – the avalanche – came and thankfully the other three went in. But that was an unbelievable moment. Obviously, I’ve been blessed to play basketball at a high level for a very long time. I don’t know … this ranks very high in terms of the excitement and the sense of relief, getting to the finish line.”
Curry's final line of 24 points (on eight three-pointers), five assists and two steals gave him 60 points in the two-game medal round.
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Perhaps it should not have come down to this. The United States again were disjointed at times on offense, committing 17 turnovers in a 40-minute game, which is four more than any team in the Atlantic 10 Conference averaged last season. Coach Steve Kerr’s decision not to build around a pass-first point guard began to appear problematic even on a day where the U.S. earned assists on 29 of 36 field goals.
In previous games, James had taken on the moment and assured victory. He scored the game-winner against South Sudan and the final 11 points to escape from Germany in exhibition games, and he again was the hero in the narrow semifinal victory over Serbia with four assists in the final quarter and some physical defense against Nikola Jokic.
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And though James contributed plenty in this one, with 14 points and 10 assists and one of many hands engaged in attempting to defend Wembanyama, it was best for him to stand aside when Curry took command.
“Through all the noise, all the pressure – I think we might be the only team in the world whose fans are ashamed of them if they get a silver medal,” Kerr told NBC. “And that’s the pressure that we face. Our players, and you saw Steph, they love the pressure. They appreciate this atmosphere. They were fantastic.
“The shot-making was just incredible, but under the circumstances – on the road, in Paris, against France, for a gold medal – this is storybook stuff. That’s what Steph does. He likes to be in storybooks.”
This was one that almost wasn’t written. Although he’s been an NBA All-Star for a decade, has won an MVP Award and four league titles, this is Curry’s first Olympic gold medal.
In 2008, Curry still was a college student at Davidson. In 2012, he was just beginning to find his game with the Golden State Warriors. In 2016, he was not healthy. And when the Tokyo Games arrived, and USA Basketball certainly could have used him, he declined an offer because he wanted to preserve his health in advance of the Golden State Warriors’ 2021-22 season. (And they did go on to win it all that year).
He nearly missed his Olympics window by passing on that one, but when USA Basketball’s Grant Hill approached this time, Curry accepted the challenge.
And when his teammates needed him most, with France creeping all too close and Wembanyama showing off his improbable skill and the silver medal starting to seem a very real possibility for the Americans for the first time in 50 years, Curry took on the moment. He made it his. For that, he was presented a gold medal, along with his 12 USA Basketball teammates. It is what is expected, honestly, after five in a row and 17 total in 88 years of Olympic basketball.
But we never expected it quite like this.
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