Team USA’s basketball reign continues — but Victor Wembanyama’s time is now.
The Americans claimed their fifth consecutive Olympic gold medal in men’s basketball with a 98-87 victory over France on Saturday in an entertaining game tight until the very end, when Stephen Curry hit four threes in the game’s final 2:48 to turn a three-point margin into an 11-point victory.
France was only close thanks to Wembanyama, the reigning NBA Rookie of the Year, a 7-foot-4 phenom for the San Antonio Spurs who finished with 26 points on 11-of-19 shooting from the field to push his home country to a silver medal in his first-ever Olympic appearance.
While this is only the beginning for the 20-year-old Wembanyama, it is the end of the road for USA Basketball as the country knows it. A team leaning heavily on its three Hall of Fame-bound stars in international play will lose its crutches in the years to come.
Curry, who combined to hit 17 threes in the final two games of his first-ever Olympic run, will be 40 when the Games come to Los Angeles in 2028. LeBron James will be 40 years old at the end of December, and Kevin Durant will be 39.
It is unlikely any of the leaders of this year’s Team USA roster return for the next Olympic run on home soil.
Wembanyama, of course, has another two decades of basketball ahead of him, and a player who averaged 21 points, 10.6 rebounds, 3.9 assists and a rookie-record 3.6 blocks per game as a rookie is only scratching the surface of his potential.
And with Wemby projecting to spend the majority if not the entirety of his career in San Antonio with Gregg Popovich, the sky’s the limit, not just for the player, but for the country he just to silver, a country that will continue to build its national basketball program around one of the most unique talents the sport has ever seen.
As for the Americans?
With Curry, James and Durant on the way out, Anthony Edwards, Jayson Tatum, Tyrese Haliburton and Devin Booker take a step forward. Jalen Brunson likely enters the conversation, too: The Knicks’ captain and floor general will still be 30 years old when the Olympics move to L.A. in four years.
Cooper Flagg, the projected No. 1 overall pick in 2025 who impressed as part of Team USA’s Select Team this summer, projects to be a USA Basketball fixture. There’s also Joel Embiid, who publicly toyed with the idea of defecting from Team USA to his home country of Cameroon.
The international game is getting better. Meanwhile, the NBA is watching its changing of the guard.
At least USA Basketball has a few more years before it needs to attack this issue. Wembanyama’s reign will begin soon at the NBA level, but Team USA proved its point, securing yet another gold medal with its biggest stars on the way out.
END OF AN ERA
What better way to close a chapter on one era of basketball than James, Durant and Curry not only sharing the floor, but each having signature performances to lead the country to gold.
Durant’s Olympic run ends with the most points in USA Basketball history, a record he claimed after missing all five exhibition games, only to make his first eight shots in an early-tournament victory over Serbia. Durant now has four gold medals, the first male athlete to win four golds in a team sport.
James secured more legacy points in his quest to catch Michael Jordan for the title of greatest basketball player of all-time: From USA flag-bearer to 2024 Paris Olympics MVP, plus a triple-double in the semifinal victory over Serbia.
And Curry continues to put even more distance between himself and whichever three-point shooter the world wants to choose as second-best. Curry got better as the pressure mounted.
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