Amick: Steph Curry Was Ready to ‘Meet the Moment’ in a Way We’ve Never Seen Before

August 9, 2024

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Amick: Steph Curry Was Ready to ‘Meet the Moment’ in a Way We’ve Never Seen Before

PARIS — The ball bounced off the rim five times.

Five!

Stephen Curry came off Joel Embiid’s brick-house screen late in the fourth quarter, while Serbian guard Ognjen Dobrić ran into a wall like Wile E. Coyote and fell to the ground. The greatest shooter of all time was shooting from above and might as well have landed on a craps table.

With just 144 seconds left in this FIBA-style game where the clock is no one’s friend, it crashed through the net to give Team USA its first lead since midway through the first quarter. Ultimately, Team USA pulled off one of the most stunning comebacks in history, somehow overcoming a 17-point deficit to Serbia, 95-91, en route to the Olympic gold medal game against France. In the end, we’ll truly come to appreciate how close this team — featuring the likes of LeBron James, Curry, Kevin Durant and many more all-time talents — came to a level of notoriety that would have eclipsed the 2004 team that took bronze in Athens and inspired a reckoning within the national program as a result.

STEPHEN. CURRY. TEAM USA LEADS.#Olympic Games in Paris | 📺 NBC, USA Network and Peacock photo.twitter.com/C4MUUl1v78

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 8, 2024

Phew.

I really don’t know what else to say.

When you cover international tournaments like the Olympics, there is a level of support from some non-American media for their respective teams that, to be honest, is quite daunting. Some reporters cheer the press line, which is considered a no-go in the United States, and others even shout derogatory things at American players like Joel Embiid (true story).

But to watch these Americans walk to the rim the way they did, to anticipate the kind of criticism that would come their way from people like me if they came up short, was to quietly hope that shots like Curry’s late 3 would fall. It’s a dynamic that simply doesn’t exist in the NBA, one born of the reality that you know one group of people so much better than others. And when Curry finished the job, stealing that pass from Bogdan Bogdanović and running coast-to-coast for a left-to-right layup that put Team USA up 91-86 with 1:01 left on the clock, there was a sense of relief that the Golden State Warriors star had finally had a moment in his debut Summer Games.

As Team USA coach Steve Kerr said afterward, Curry had the aura of a player who could press. He scored in single figures in three of Team USA’s four Olympic Games, while averaging a career-high 7.3 points in the first four, with the lone highlight of his first Olympic experience coming in an exhibition game against Serbia on July 17, in which he scored 24 points.

That was child’s play compared to this one. Curry was unconscious, finished with 36 points while hitting 12 of 19 shots and burying nine of 14 3s overall.

Do you know how many times he’s made that many 3’s on 14 or fewer attempts in his entire legendary career? Nine, according to Stathead.comand that includes 1,103 games total between the regular season and the playoffs (0.8 percent of the time). As a reminder, these games are 40 minutes long, not the 48 minutes we see in the NBA. The fact that it was in a game where Team USA was in such desperate need of a basketball hero made it all the more epic.

“There were times the last couple weeks where I thought (Curry) was working too hard,” said Kerr, the Warriors coach who has had a front-row seat to Curry’s greatness for a decade. “He just cares so much, works so hard on his game all the time. We all know who he is, what he’s about, and I almost wanted to tell him, ‘Hey, take a day off,’ but that’s just not who he is. He works so hard, and he’s pushed himself into tonight’s game the last couple weeks with the work he’s put in.”

Curry, the 36-year-old who was still enjoying the Olympic experience off the floor, insisted the walls were not closing in on him.

“I didn’t feel any (pressure) at all, because we were winning every game by … 15, 20 points,” he said. “I know I’m affecting the game in other ways. But about two minutes into the game tonight, we realized I was getting looks, they were playing a different type of defense on us. Obviously they were scoring crazy on the other end, so you just keep going and get lost in the moment.

“It’s what the game demands. I shot three times last game (in a loss to Brazil), and I didn’t want to force it because that’s not what the game demands. So that’s the beauty of Team USA and FIBA and this whole experience. Every game was someone different.”

Still, hearing Curry’s side of the story made me realize that this role has been a huge adjustment for him. Though he started the game against Serbia shooting just 35.7 percent from the field and 25 percent from three (5 of 20), he also averaged just seven shots per game. That context, the reality that this team makes it so difficult for so many great players to find a way to play the way they do with their NBA teams, often gets lost in the discussion.

“I haven’t had a lot of opportunities,” Curry said so clearly. “I haven’t shot the ball well the whole tournament, but that doesn’t take away from your confidence to face the moment.”

And so he did.

As one of the greatest basketball games of all time wrapped up, James—who was part of the ’04 team that the USA Basketball program would rather everyone forget—threw the ball into the air and looked down to see Curry reaching for him with unbridled joy. It was a surreal scene in every way, the image of these two NBA rivals sharing the kind of memory no one could have imagined when their Cavs and Warriors teams were battling it out in the Finals all those years.

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So I asked James, where does this game stand emotionally?

“I mean, it’s out there,” said James, the four-time champion and Los Angeles Lakers star whose triple-double (16 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists) played a huge role in the victory. “I mean, I’m 39 years old, going into my 22nd season. I don’t know how many more opportunities or moments like this I’m going to get, to be able to compete for something big and play in big games.”

This game was bigger than big. It was nothing short of magical, with all the history woven together between the players who mattered most and were cast aside for the sake of national pride. Just listen to Kevin Durant, the Phoenix Suns star who won two championships with Curry in Golden State, sounding like he’d never seen anything like it before.

“Steph, man, that was a God-like performance,” said Durant, who forced Bogdanović into a crucial backcourt foul with 1:34 left and made a nasty jumper with 34 seconds left to give Team USA a 93-89 lead. “Damn, (Curry) was tough. He felt like he struggled the whole tournament, and we said every night it could be somebody different (every game). And tonight he showed up in a way that, man…”

Durant was almost at a loss for words.

“Shot after shot, a steal and then finish it off with a layup,” he said. “He was everywhere tonight. It was one of the best games I’ve ever seen him play.”