Profitable cures many issues. However profitable gold would possibly simply remedy all the pieces. For that, thank Stephen Curry.
By beating France, 98-87, in Paris within the gold medal recreation of the 2024 Olympics on Saturday, the USA males’s basketball group did not simply preserve its nation the place it belongs within the pantheon of worldwide basketball. The Individuals silenced all of the drama that accompanied them to this spot.
Jayson Tatum getting benched in a number of video games? The close to loss to South Sudan in a warm-up recreation? Serbia dominating most of their semifinal earlier than a late cost by Curry & Co.? Steve Kerr’s questionable rotations?
It was all out of the blue gone, changed by the glitter of gold, flattened in a flurry of Curry 3s — eight of them! — that set one other mark of his greatness and lifted USA to the heights of worldwide basketball.
Curry scored a recreation excessive 24 factors, was 8 of 12 from 3-point vary, and had 12 essential fourth-quarter factors. He confirmed once more why he’s a top-five participant within the historical past of the sport.
Even Kevin Durant’s Twitter barrage lamenting Nikola Jokic followers praising the Serbian in his loss to Group USA on Thursday — which I, for one, would definitely tag as a weird and petty social media spree — light below the greatness of Curry’s efficiency and the magnitude of Olympic gold.
That is the factor about profitable to your nation, and simply profitable, particularly when it has that individual hue of an all-time nice efficiency: The last word purpose has this manner of erasing the main points of the way it was completed.
Similar to the Tatum saga would’ve gone full DEFCON 1 had America misplaced a pair days in the past, the tip result’s typically extra necessary than what we bear in mind, much more necessary than the reality. The main points that accompany these moments alongside the best way virtually all the time give approach right into a historical past painted in a lot broader strokes — it is the magic we bear in mind, not the opposite stuff.
Not if you happen to win, like Group USA did Saturday.
And Saturday was magical. It was particular. And it does matter.
“Two years in the past, once we received our final [NBA] championship, I knew that this was going to be on the horizon as one thing I used to be excited to go after,” Curry advised NBC after profitable gold in his first Olympic Video games. “…These final 5 weeks along with this group has been nothing however ‘1-2-3 gold.’ That is all we have been saying. So, for us to lastly accomplish that, for me to get a gold medal is insane.”
Take LeBron James and Kevin Durant, too, the pillars together with Curry of this era of basketball. It will seemingly be their remaining Olympics for his or her nation, and the excellence they confirmed en path to the medal they earned was nothing in need of spectacular.
LeBron notched on this run what was then solely the fourth triple double within the historical past of the Olympics, and his grey beard and his growing older physique appear to reinforce the impact of realizing how particular this was, how fleeting his greatness should absolutely be.
Durant, too, had moments of scorching greatness that might defy perception if we hadn’t seen it earlier than. Early on this Olympic run specifically, he was capable of step up and set the tone for American dominance.
And Curry, after all, offered one of many best Olympic performances we have ever seen within the fourth quarter of this gold medal recreation.
The drama, the errors, the shut calls, the Twitter tantrums, the questions all of us had — they have been actual once they occurred, they usually have been largely reputable, too.
However that is what all-time greats do: they push apart the true life struggles and doubts and errors and difficulties that might fell most of us lesser males, and switch such issues into the background noise of success.
Their efficiency — notably Curry’s Saturday evening — might be remembered a lot extra for its gold medal historical past than the histrionics surrounding it.
