To steal a phrase from the famed (and fake) guitarist Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap, the Team USA men’s basketball team can “turn it up to eleven” whenever they want.
Team USA flexed for a moment against Serbia in a 109-75 exhibition win over Serbia and three-time NBA Most Valuable Player Nikola Jokic on July 17 in Abu Dhabi, but head coach Steve Kerr took his hand off the volume nob, so to speak, after he pulled Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry after the two-time NBA Most Valuable Player scored 18 points in 11 minutes.
The win improved Team USA to 3-0 in exhibition games. Team USA opens the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris on July 28 against Serbia.
“This is the way Team USA is supposed to look,” wrote ESPN’s Brian Windhorst. “Merciless firepower and relentless talent deployment. Now two weeks into the journey toward the Paris Olympics, the Americans aren’t perfect, but this potentially historic group is starting to show its teeth.”
Curry ended with 24 points on 8-of-13 shooting, including 6-of-9 on three pointers.
Curry Playing in Olympics for First Time
This is the first time Curry is playing in the Olympics in his storied career, and he’s doing it with his head coach, Kerr, who he’s teamed up with to win four NBA championships over the last decade.
This isn’t his first time representing the U.S., however, with gold medals playing for Team USA in the FIBA World Cup in 2010 and 2014.
“I’m pretty sure I get started like I did (against Serbia) in the second quarter (in the Olympics) and I probably wouldn’t come out at that point,” Curry told Windhorst.
The wear-and-tear from the NBA season has kept Curry out of the Olympics in the past, but not this year — possibly his last chance to represent his country.
“I’ve talked some people about the opportunity and definitely, if all things stay the same, I wanna be playing,” Curry told The Athletic’s Anthony Slater in Oct. 2023. “It’s the one thing I haven’t done. And I also understand the opportunity for Team USA to kinda reassert (ourselves) as the dominant in the world. So I definitely wanna be there, I definitely wanna be on the team, and hopefully things line up that way where we’re all there.”
NBA Champion, NBA MVP, No Olympic Gold Medal
An Olympic gold medal would be perhaps the final achievement missing from Curry’s storied basketball career.
Curry was a two-time consensus All-American at Davidson before the Warriors selected him at No. 7 overall in the 2009 NBA draft — the third point guard taken — he’s won four NBA championships with the Warriors and is a two-time NBA MVP.
He’s also been named NBA Finals MVP (2022), NBA All-Star Game MVP (2022), is a 10-time NBA All-Star, 10-time All-NBA Team selection, 2-time NBA Three-Point Contest champion and was named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team in 2021.
Curry also holds NBA records for career three-pointers (3,747), career free-throw percentage (91 percent), and most three-pointers in a single season (402).
In 2021, Curry became the first NBA player to sign a second contract worth over $200 million, and when his current contract runs out in 2025 he will have accumulated a staggering $470 million in career earnings.
