The 2024 Paris Olympics has concluded and the United States men's basketball team brought home a fifth straight gold medal by the skin of its teeth. Serbia had the Americans dead to rights until it went dark from 3 (0 for 10 in the fourth quarter) as Stephen Curry was on an all-time heater.
France followed that with a scare of its own in the gold-medal game, but Curry once again put on his cape with four 3-pointers in a two-minute stretch as the U.S. breathed a massive sigh of relief.
For me, that was the most entertaining Olympic basketball tournament I've ever watched. Curry was in full "no freaking way he just did that" mode, and the two white-knuckle endings the Americans had to navigate weren't because they were playing down to the competition. On the contrary, they were forced to raise their level to the apex of their individual and collective talent to win this gold medal.
Serbia and France gave us all a wonderful gift by bringing those two performances out of the Americans. It was just an extraordinary couple weeks of basketball, and along the way, as has been the case with every Olympic competition since we started sending NBA players in 1992, one of the most fun parts of it all was getting to see all these superstars playing together.
It makes you wonder: Who would be the Olympic duos you'd most love to see paired up in the NBA? There are actually a bunch, but I've narrowed it down to three -- two of which are probably pure fantasy. But hell, it's the offseason. Let's have a little fun.
LeBron James and Stephen Curry
Not only have these two been the leading men in one of the most epic rivalries the NBA, and really the whole sports world, has ever seen, but as we saw over these past few weeks in Paris, they are perfectly suited to complement one another on the court.
Watching James conduct the U.S. offense felt in many ways like the purest form of basketball he has ever played. At his most cellular level, he has always been more Magic than Michael, a master manipulator with the ball in his hands and the clarity of a 6-foot-8 view. With Curry being not just the signature shooter but also the most lethal route runner in NBA history, what we would get is basketball's version of Montana to Rice.
The greatest quarterback. The greatest receiver. Two players with sixth-sense intuitions seeing the court as one, sensing space before it even materializes, LeBron passing not to where Curry is, but where he's going to be. As Curry emerges from the maze of his own random making, he meets the ball, or the ball meets him, it's too synchronized to tell, but either way its on time and target and in perfect position for the world's most masterful marksman to pull the quickest trigger known to man.
"You just marvel at his talent," James said of playing with Curry in Paris. "Obviously, I've seen it before, you know, on the opposite side. But having him on your side, you just try to get stops and figure out other ways on the other end, but keep finding him. Keep getting him the ball."
That's one page of the playbook. Pick and rolls become a whole other unsolvable riddle. Make Curry the screener, as Steve Kerr did in the most crucial stretches Team USA faced in Paris, and he either pops up top for an open 3 or you chase LeBron from behind as he barrels downhill.
Now flip it. Put the ball in Curry's hands and watch him feast on pull-up 3s until double teams become a necessary evil, at which point he passes over the top to what would quite simply be the most dangerous short roller in history as LeBron Freaking James, the most prescient passer since at least Magic Johnson, quickly conquers the 4-on-3 chess board before him. Defenses, even with LeBron on the doorstep of 40 and Curry only a few years behind, wouldn't stand a chance.
Now, is an NBA marriage of the past decade's two greatest players an even halfway realistic possibility? Almost certainly not. That's what made watching them work magic together in Paris so special, because we've never seen them on the same team and likely never will again.
But hey, nobody ever thought Curry and Kevin Durant would play together, and it's not like the Warriors or Lakers are in a position to compete for a title. We know the Warriors actually pitched the Lakers on a trade for LeBron at last year's deadline. LeBron, according to ESPN, shot the idea down, but what if this Olympic experience has planted a seed in his head? What if Klay Thompson leaving the Warriors, who are clearly not willing to go all-in on one last run at a fifth championship, has left Curry, if only in his most private moments, more willing to at least entertain the idea of finishing his own career somewhere else?
Again, it's almost surely never going to happen. But if we're going to dream, we might as well dream big.
Kevin Durant and Anthony Edwards
The beauty of Durant is he fits on any team with any co-star. He's Paul George if he woke up one morning with superpowers. Edwards, meanwhile, is Devin Booker strapped to a rocket booster. The KD-Ant pairing probably wouldn't equate to the multiplicative powers of a LeBron/Curry marriage, but man, would it be fun to watch them take turns as similarly spectacular scorers.
Edwards is already one of the most joyful performers in the league, and watching his thousand-watt smile light up at the opportunity to play in Paris alongside Durant, his childhood idol, was pretty cool. When Ant caught a lob pass from Durant for a dunk in the Olympics, you could see the dream-come-true joy written all over his face as he floated back down the court.
We know Durant can thrive alongside other stars; he's the greatest Olympic player in history and stepped right into the Golden State machine at the height of its power and only added to its efficiency. That was a question many people had about Edwards as he declared himself Team USA's No. 1 option: Would he be able to curb his takeover instincts when deference was called for? He had no problem doing that in Paris, where he naturally toggled between superstar scorer and supremely overqualified support staff.
In a hypothetical world, perhaps the Suns would want to align a younger co-star with Booker's longer timeline while the Timberwolves aim to maximize this current window, which could be the logic behind a deal sending Durant to Minnesota in exchange for Karl-Anthony Towns.
I'll tell you this: Durant and Edwards, with that Minnesota defense, would be incredible, and Towns could quietly turn Booker and Bradley Beal into a superstar duo with five-out spacing. I'm trying to talk myself into this!
Nikola Jokic and Bogdan Bogdanovic
This one actually seems realistic. After watching these two work together for the Serbian team that came this close to upsetting the Americans in Paris, Denver would be justified in giving Atlanta a call and trying to figure out a way to make some salaries work with the sweetener of a future first-round pick to get it done.
The Hawks would almost certainly be open to a deal, and boy would Bogey, an absolutely lethal 3-point shooter, address a big-time need for the Nuggets, who ranked dead last in 3-point attempts and 25th in 3-point makes per game last season. Even with Jokic, the best player and most bankable creator of offense in the world, that's a tough hole to dig out of every night.
Bogdanovic was one of three players at the Olympics to make at least 18 3-pointers, joining Germany's Dennis Schroder (18) and Curry, who made a preposterous 17 triples in the final two games and finished with 22 for the tournament.
I would love to see Jokic and Bogdanovic hook back up on an NBA team, and again, it actually seems realistic.