Enjoy this era of U.S. men's basketball Olympic superstars while you still can
PARIS – If the United States is about to relinquish its stranglehold on Olympic men’s basketball this week, they’ve nicely hidden the plot twist.
The Americans messed around a bit before they got here, but thus far in these Paris Games, they’ve been about business. The U.S. has won four games by an average margin of nearly 25 points, including Tuesday night’s 122-87 drubbing of poor Brazil in the quarterfinals.
Maybe another team still in this tournament has a chance to make it interesting (looking at you, France) and give the Americans a game. Difficult to expect it’ll be Serbia in the semifinals. Not when they’ve played already, and Serbia lost 110-84 in pool play. Serbia, at least, does have Nikola Jokic.
Brazil had no chance. No Oscar Schmidt out there in green and gold.
There was a LeBron James in a U.S. uniform, though. And a Steph Curry. And a Kevin Durant, too.
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Watching this U.S. team at full force inspires nostalgia for simpler NBA times, back in the days you knew before the season started that Golden State and Cleveland were going to be in the Finals. It also keeps a thought in the back of your mind: This is an end more than a beginning.
“It's a blessing and it's an honor to be able to still compete at this level and represent Team USA,” James said Tuesday night, “especially at the later stages of my career.”
LeBron is 39. Steph is 36. Durant is 35.
These Olympics in Paris have long carried that last-ride-together feel for a special generation of American hoops legends. Sooner than later, USA Basketball is going to have to figure out what’s next.
Or, more appropriately, who is next?
Of the eight quarterfinalists playing Tuesday in Paris, Serbia (27.7 years) had the youngest roster. Canada (28.1) and France (28.3) were next. The oldest was the United States (30.2).
Only five members of Team USA are under 30: Anthony Edwards (23), Tyrese Haliburton (24), Jayson Tatum (26), Bam Adebayo (27) and Devin Booker (27). Among them and a few other big names that aren’t here, there’s a lack of clear succession for national team stardom.
I’m not talking about good players. There are plenty of good young American players in the NBA.
But start naming potentially great ones under 30.
Edwards. OK. Who else?
Ja Morant? Maybe. If he wants to be. Tatum? Booker? Jalen Brunson? Haliburton? Jaylen Brown? Donovan Mitchell? De’Aaron Fox? Someone else?
Put another way: Who in that above paragraph would you prefer long-term over France’s Victor Wembanyama, the unanimous NBA Rookie of the Year?
It’s not that we’re approaching a new age in which the brightest men’s basketball stars are no longer from the United States. We’re already there. Five of the last six NBA MVPs went to Jokic (Serbia) or Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece). Prior to that, seven different Americans won 11 MVPs in a row.
Each year, you see the growing impact of basketball globalization in the NBA draft. Not a bad thing, by the way, but it does foretell a future in which the U.S. men will be respected internationally, but no longer feared. They won’t show up at Olympic quarterfinals having already won before the game begins.
That’s not the uniforms. It’s the aura and the presence and the names: LeBron, Steph, Durant.
“No matter what the score was at the end of the game,” Curry said Tuesday, “it was very hard to win. We might make it look easy, but it's really, really difficult.”
Meanwhile, the NBA’s top four MVP vote-getters after this past season: Jokic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Canada), Luka Doncic (Slovenia) and Antetokounmpo. Fifth-place was an American – Brunson – who was snubbed for this U.S. Olympic team. If he wasn’t good enough to make it this time, would he be trusted to lead it in four years in Los Angeles?
That 2028 U.S. team will be good. It’ll probably favored to win a gold medal.
But how many more U.S. Olympic men’s basketball teams will be great? How many more U.S. players will respond as James did Tuesday night when a media member noted that it seems like he’s on a mission in these Olympics? “Absolutely,” James said. “You’re correct.”
Enjoy this while you still can.
Reach Gentry Estes at [email protected] and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @Gentry_Estes.