The US men’s basketball team won their fifth consecutive Olympic gold medal in a thrilling rematch with host nation France at the Paris Olympics, pitting dynastic NBA superstars LeBron James and Stephen Curry together for the first and likely last time over the ascendant Frenchman Victor Wembanyama.
In the 98-87 victory, Curry, an Olympic rookie, led the Americans with 24 points including eight three-pointers. At age 36, he joined LeBron James, 39, and Kevin Durant, 35, in a once in a lifetime union of the millennial generation’s best National Basketball Association players on the US squad, which now has seventeen Olympic golds in men’s hoops.
“I came into this experience thinking that this would be my one and only time to play in the Olympics and experience this stage”, Curry said earlier this week. After hitting a gravity-defying three point shot with less than a minute remaining in Saturday’s game, he mimicked a napping gesture as if to say he had put French hopes of an upset to rest.