US takes fifth straight Olympic gold in basketball with win over France

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The US males’s basketball crew gained their fifth consecutive Olympic gold medal in an exciting rematch with host nation France on the Paris Olympics, pitting dynastic NBA superstars LeBron James and Stephen Curry collectively for the primary and sure final time over the ascendant Frenchman Victor Wembanyama.

Within the 98-87 victory, Curry, an Olympic rookie, led the Individuals with 24 factors together with eight three-pointers. At age 36, he joined LeBron James, 39, and Kevin Durant, 35, in a as soon as in a lifetime union of the millennial technology’s greatest Nationwide Basketball Affiliation gamers on the US squad, which now has seventeen Olympic golds in males’s hoops. 

“I got here into this expertise considering that this might be my one and solely time to play within the Olympics and expertise this stage”, Curry mentioned earlier this week. After hitting a gravity-defying three level shot with lower than a minute remaining in Saturday’s recreation, he mimicked a napping gesture as if to say he had put French hopes of an upset to relaxation.

“It’s every thing I imagined and extra”, he mentioned after the medal ceremony in Paris. “Having the time of my life, taking all of it in since you by no means know if this second would occur once more.”

France was led by Wembanyama with 26 factors, coming off his personal NBA Rookie of the Yr season with the San Antonio Spurs. Guerschon Yabusele added one other 20 factors together with an iconic dunk over James within the publish which amplified the house crowd, filling Bercy Area with chants of “MVP”.

Amongst attendees was French President Emmanuel Macron, soccer star Thierry Henry, US sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson and late-night host Jimmy Fallon.

Saturday’s recreation was a rematch of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic last and a showcase of the deep worldwide expertise pool on each side of the Atlantic. Organisers of the Paris Video games have oriented each the lads’s and girls’s basketball tournaments in direction of a aim of setting the Olympic file for basketball attendance, setting the group stage in a northern soccer stadium in Lille.

“That is the second time I’ve acquired silver, and I get bored with it. I must get a gold”, mentioned Yabusele, who additionally performed for France in Tokyo.

Regardless of extending their run of Olympic golds, the US males weren’t with out adversity in Paris, narrowly defeating Serbia 95-91 within the semi-final after trailing for the primary three quarters on Thursday. The Balkan squad, led by three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić, went on to defeat Germany for the bronze medal earlier Saturday.

James, the four-time NBA champion, was named most beneficial participant of the event by Fiba, the worldwide basketball governing physique. Regardless of the subsequent Olympics going down in his present house of Los Angeles, he mentioned this was doubtless his final Video games.

“At this latter stage of my profession, I don’t know many video games I’m going to play, what number of extra massive moments [ I’ll have]”, he mentioned. “I can’t see myself taking part in in LA. I additionally didn’t see myself taking part in in Paris, however 4 years from now—nah, man.”