PARIS — The headlines and hot takes were gathering like storm clouds on the horizon. The United States men’s basketball team was down 17 to Serbia — Serbia? — and you could hear the knives getting sharpened.
Entitled. Selfish. Greedy. Maybe even a Woke or Un-American thrown in there, too. When you suit up for Team USA men’s basketball team, there are expectations, and one of those expectations is that you don’t lose in the semifinal round to freaking Serbia.
There’s also this: when you hail from a league that’s taken some definitive political stances in the last few years, there are a whole lot of people who will delight in your failure no matter what letters are on your chest.
Fortunately for the United States, and unfortunately for the sports-talk radio hosts and Twitter agitators of the world, America has Stephen Curry. And Steph solves a whole lot of problems.
Curry, playing in his first Olympics, finally found his stroke on Thursday night, pouring in 36 of the United States’ 95 points in its four-point win over Serbia. He started hot, draining 14 of the USA’s first 15 points. Then he got a little cocky, missing a three-pointer from just inside the half-court line … and it turned out that miss was all Serbia needed to start a monster first-half assault.
“They came out and made a lot of tough shots in the first half,” Curry acknowledged.
Devin Booker put it more succinctly: “They punched us in the face to start.”
Curry stayed hot, but the rest of the United States couldn’t get on his level, and the result was a game that ranged from annoying to maddening to desperate. Team USA fell 17 points behind, and only the fact that several of the world’s greatest basketball players remembered who they were, and played accordingly, allowed the Americans to escape what surely would have been the Most Humiliating Loss In Olympic History. (Another provocative headline, vanished.)
Anthony Edwards, the first of the Americans to speak after the game, projected the confidence that comes when you know you’ve avoided utter devastation. “We was never like, ‘Oh no, it’s over,’” he said, smiling. “We knew we was going to turn it around. We didn’t know when it was going to happen.”
It happened in the fourth quarter, when the U.S. whittled away at a 13-point deficit, finally taking the lead on Curry’s running 3-pointer with 2:24 remaining in the game.
“Steph, that was a godlike performance,” Kevin Durant said. “Shot after shot, getting a steal and finishing with a layup, he was everywhere tonight. That was one of the greatest games I’ve ever seen him play.”
Considering Durant was Curry’s teammate for one of Curry’s MVP seasons and two of his championship years, that’s some high praise.
The only reason why the U.S. came through at all was that Curry didn’t have to do it all alone. LeBron James, who had spent the entire game throwing himself at the wall that is Serbia’s three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić, added 17 points, 12 boards and one crucial late-game steal to extend the lead. Joel Embiid found his touch for 19 points even as boos still rained down on him for choosing to play for America over France. Durant, in foul trouble most of the night, feathered in late shots to ice the win.
“You see who they are,” Edwards said of his teammates. “These are the moments they showed the world who they are.”
Afterward, Durant was in a philosophical mood. “I love representing our country. we all love representing our country,” he said. “A lot of bull[expletive] goes on in our country too, but there’s a lot of great things that come from where we come from, too.
“There’s so much divided in our country, so much divided in our world,” he went on. “Sports is an opportunity to come together and compete, but it’ll be a friendly competition at the end of the day. We can all go home and respect the game we played tonight, both countries. We’re going to come out here next game and do the same thing.”
So, yeah … heads up, France. Chef Curry is cooking now.