USA Basketball names men’s team packed with All-Stars for Paris Olympics
LeBron James returns to the Olympic Games for the first time in twelve years. Stephen Curry is going to the Games for the first time. Kevin Durant will go there with his eyes on history. The trio are just part of a star-studded squad the Americans have put together for Paris 2024.
USA Basketball announced its Olympic men’s team for Paris on Wednesday. James, Curry, Durant, Bam Adebayo, Devin Booker, Joel Embiid, Jayson Tatum, Anthony Davis, Jrue Holiday, Tyrese Haliburton, Anthony Edwards and Kawhi Leonard are the twelve names on the list. schedule.
“We’re giving ourselves a chance to win with the talent we have,” USA Basketball President Grant Hill said on NBC’s Today show. “It will be exciting. It will be difficult. It won’t be easy. We have great respect for all other teams. But this will certainly be an iconic selection.”
The group has seven players with ten Olympic gold medals between them; Durant has three, James has two, while Adebayo, Booker, Holiday, Tatum and Booker each have one. Combined, the 12 players averaged 24.2 points, 7.0 rebounds and 5.6 assists this season while shooting 39% from three-point range.
“It’s obviously a great honor to represent your country,” Adebayo said. “But for me, to be in that room as part of those 12 players, part of who they think are the 12 best players to represent the United States, it takes it to another level.”
The amount of talent on the American roster is impressive. Of the twelve players, seven finished the season among the top 15 NBA scorers per game. James is the league’s all-time leader, Curry is the all-time leader in three-pointers, Haliburton won the assist-per-game title this season and there were also ten All-Stars this season. James, Curry, Durant and Embiid have all been named NBA MVPs during their careers.
“The goal is to win the gold,” Hill said. “They know that.”
The Americans have won the last four Olympic gold medals and remain world No. 1, according to Fiba, even after failing to win medals in the two most recent World Cups – finishing seventh in 2019 and fourth last summer .
They won gold at the Tokyo Games by beating France 87-82. Team USA will be a heavy favorite to retain their title and have won the last four men’s events at the Olympics. But the talent in international basketball has grown tremendously in recent years and they will face competition from teams including two-time MVP Nikola Jokic’s Serbia, a stacked Canada team, Germany, which defeated the US en route to winning the 2023 Fiba World Cup, and host France, led by the 7-foot-4 Victor Wembanyama, who set the NBA on fire in his rookie NBA season.
“You hope they haven’t played together before,” Canadian Kelly Olynyk said when told about the U.S. roster, “other than the last 12 All-Star games.”
Hill has been in charge of building the roster in recent months, and the plan all along was to assemble the team well in advance of training camp that begins in Las Vegas in early July.
Durant has said since last year that he plans to play, meaning he aims to become the first men’s player in Olympic history with four basketball gold medals. He and Carmelo Anthony are the only men’s players with three Olympic gold medals; there are six women, all American, with at least four Olympic basketball golds. Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi each have five, while Teresa Edwards, Tamika Catchings, Sylvia Fowles and Lisa Leslie each won four.
James will be aiming for a fourth medal, after winning bronze in 2004 and gold in 2008 and 2012. The other past gold medalists on the roster are Davis (2012), Adebayo (2020), Booker (2020), Tatum ( 2020) and Holiday (2020). The 2020 gold medals were won in 2021 as the Covid-19 pandemic forced a one-year postponement of the Tokyo Games.
Curry will be competing in the Olympics for the first time, as will Leonard and Embiid – who opted to play for the US last year after becoming US citizens. The Cameroon-born center could also have opted to represent France at the Paris Games.
The other debut Olympians on the current roster are Haliburton and Edwards, both of whom played for the U.S. team that finished fourth at last year’s World Cup in Manila.
There were over 40 players eligible for this team, and narrowing the roster down to 12 was far from easy.
“I think everyone understands that these Olympics will be perhaps the most anticipated, given that it’s Paris, in terms of players wanting to go, players’ wives wanting to go, everyone wanting to go,” said US coach Steve Kerr. “It definitely made for some really tough decisions for us.”
Durant and Curry said in October that they wanted to play this summer, Adebayo said then that he had already committed to the team, and it has been believed for some time that if players like James want to play, all they have to do is say So.
The American men have competed in basketball at the Olympic Games 19 times and won 19 medals: 16 gold, one silver and two bronze.
The Paris squad is coached by Kerr, assisted by Erik Spoelstra, Tyronn Lue and Mark Few. It’s still possible the roster could change before the summer, if injuries or deep runs in the NBA playoffs force players to change their minds about their commitment to the national team.