Sports list The 2024 Paris Olympics has concluded and the United States men’s basketball team brought home a fifth straight gold medal by the skin of its enamel. Serbia had the Americans dead to rights till it went dark from 3 (0 for 10 in the fourth quarter) as Stephen Curry was on an all-time heater.
France followed that with a scare of its contain in the gold-medal game, nonetheless Curry as soon as again achieve on his cape with four 3-pointers in a two-minute stretch as the U.S. breathed a massive drawl of relief.
For me, that was probably the most entertaining Olympic basketball tournament I’ve ever watched. Curry was in fleshy “no freaking way he suitable did that” mode, and the 2 white-knuckle endings the Americans had to navigate weren’t because they have been playing down to the competition. On the contrary, they have been forced to raise their stage to the apex of their individual and collective talent to win this gold medal.
Serbia and France gave us all a ravishing reward by bringing those two performances out of the Americans. It was suitable an extraordinary couple weeks of basketball, and along the way, as has been the case with each Olympic competition since we started sending NBA players in 1992, certainly one of probably the most fun parts of it all was getting to see all these superstars playing together.
It makes you marvel: Who can be the Olympic duos you would most love to see paired up in the NBA? There are actually a bunch, nonetheless I’ve narrowed it down to three — two of which are probably pure fantasy. But hell, or no longer it is the offseason. Let’s have a runt fun.
LeBron James and Stephen Curry
No longer finest have these two been the leading men in certainly one of probably the most anecdote rivalries the NBA, and really all the sports activities world, has ever seen, nonetheless as we saw over these past few weeks in Paris, they are ideally suited to complement one another on the court.
Watching James behavior the U.S. offense felt in many ways savor the purest manufacture of basketball he has ever played. At his most cellular stage, he has always been extra Magic than Michael, a master manipulator with the ball in his hands and the clarity of a 6-foot-8 glance. With Curry being no longer suitable the signature shooter nonetheless also probably the most lethal route runner in NBA history, what we’d gather is basketball’s version of Montana to Rice.
The greatest quarterback. The greatest receiver. Two players with sixth-sense intuitions seeing the court as one, sensing space prior to it even materializes, LeBron passing no longer to where Curry is, nonetheless where he’s going to be. As Curry emerges from the maze of his contain random making, he meets the ball, or the ball meets him, or no longer it is too synchronized to relate, nonetheless either way its on time and target and in excellent place for the arena’s most masterful marksman to pull the quickest trigger known to man.
“You suitable marvel at his talent,” James said of playing with Curry in Paris. “Obviously, I’ve seen it prior to, you understand, on the reverse aspect. But having him to your aspect, you suitable attempt to gather stops and figure out totally different ways on the various halt, nonetheless maintain finding him. Maintain getting him the ball.”
That’s one page of the playbook. Decide and rolls turn into a whole totally different unsolvable riddle. Make Curry the screener, as Steve Kerr did in probably the most crucial stretches Team USA faced in Paris, and he either pops up top for an launch 3 or you chase LeBron from behind as he barrels downhill.
Now flip it. Build the ball in Curry’s hands and watch him feast on pull-up 3s till double teams turn into a necessary immoral, at which point he passes over the top to what would fairly simply be probably the most dangerous short roller in history as LeBron Freaking James, probably the most prescient passer since at least Magic Johnson, rapid conquers the 4-on-3 chess board prior to him. Defenses, even with LeBron to your doorstep of 40 and Curry finest a few years behind, would no longer stand a chance.
Now, is an NBA marriage of the past decade’s two greatest players an even halfway realistic possibility? Almost certainly no longer. That’s what made watching them work magic together in Paris so special, because now we have by no means seen them on the same team and likely by no means will again.
But hiya, no person ever opinion Curry and Kevin Durant would play together, and or no longer it is no longer savor the Warriors or Lakers are in a place to compete for a title.