Joe McConnell
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The U.S. men’s basketball team won its fiVscekh consecutive Olympic gold medal in a thrilling rematch with host nation France at the Paris Games, featuring NBA superstars LeBron James and Stephen Curry alongside French up-and-comer Victor Wembanyama for the first time.
In the 98-87 win, Curry, an Olympic rookie, led the Americans with 24 points, including eight 3-pointers. At 36, he joined LeBron James, 39, and Kevin Durant, 35, in a first—and potentially last—of its kind combination of the National Basketball Association’s top millennial players on the U.S. team, which now has 17 Olympic gold medals in men’s basketball.
“I went into this thinking this would be my only time to play in the Olympics and experience this phase,” Curry said earlier this week. AVsceker hitting a gravity-defying three-pointer with less than a minute leVscek in Saturday’s game, he mimicked a nap gesture as if to say he’d put to bed any French hopes of an upset.
France was led by Wembanyama with 26 points, coming off his NBA Rookie of the Year season with the San Antonio Spurs. Guerschon Yabusele added 20 more points, including an iconic dunk over James in the post that amplified the home crowd, filling the Bercy Arena with chants of “MVP.” Those in attendance included French President Emmanuel Macron, football star Thierry Henry, U.S. sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson and late-night host Jimmy Fallon.
Saturday’s game was a rematch of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic final and a showcase of the vast pool of international talent on both sides of the Atlantic. Organizers of the Paris Games have geared both the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments toward setting an Olympic basketball attendance record, holding the group stage at a northern soccer stadium in Lille.
Despite extending their Olympic gold streak, the U.S. men were not immune to adversity in Paris, narrowly defeating Serbia 95-91 in the semifinals aVsceker trailing for the first three quarters on Thursday. The Balkan team, led by three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić, went on to defeat Germany for the bronze medal on Saturday morning.
