CLEVELAND, Ohio- Staff USA males’s basketball earned its fifth consecutive gold medal, and seventeenth general, within the 2024 Paris Olympics on Saturday afternoon after pulling away from France 98-87 within the gold medal matchup.
The Individuals have been led by a powerhouse beginning 5 of NBA stars LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Joel Embiid. Fellow stars like Anthony Davis, Anthony Edwards, and Jayson Tatum have been out and in.
The U.S and France traded the lead for some time, because the French made an ongoing effort to maintain it shut, trailing, 49-41, on the half.
France knocked the Individuals right down to only a 3-point lead earlier than Curry shot 4 3-pointers within the last three minutes of the sport. Three of the 4 have been back-to-back with lower than two minutes on the clock.
Curry completed with a team-high of 24 factors and went 8 for 13 capturing from 3-point vary in his Olympic debut — even managing to get a 3-point shot over France’s Victor Wembanyama.
“A giant shot to place us up six. That type of settled the whole lot,” Curry advised reporters after the sport. “After which the rhythm, the avalanche got here, and fortunately the opposite three went in. That was an unbelievable second.”
“The shot-making was simply unimaginable,” U.S. coach Steve Kerr mentioned. “However underneath the circumstances, on the highway, in Paris, towards France for a gold medal, that is storybook stuff. However that’s what Steph does. He likes to be in storybooks.”
The fifth consecutive gold medal for the U.S made Phoenix Suns’ Kevin Durant the one four-time gold medalist in males’s Olympic basketball historical past.
James was named the event MVP after scoring 14 factors to go together with 10 assists, 6 rebounds, 2 steals and a block. After exhibiting up in gold-metallic footwear, it was fairly apparent James wasn’t leaving Paris with out his third Olympic gold medal.
“We received our second,” James mentioned. “That is what we wished.”
Happening his twenty second NBA season at 39 years previous, James very nicely might have performed in his last Olympic Video games, as he’s now the second-oldest participant in NBA historical past.
Regardless of his minimal taking part in time within the Olympics, Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum joins James and Michael Jordan as the one gamers in historical past to make the All NBA-first group, win an NBA championship, and win an Olympic gold medal all in the identical yr.
Amari Pitts is a graduate of the Cleveland Media Academy, an eight-week highschool journalism program sponsored by cleveland.com and The Plain Vendor in partnership with Information 5, Sign Cleveland, WKYC Studios, the Larger Cleveland Affiliation of Black Journalists.
