When the 2024 Paris Olympics began, I was in California visiting my father and stepmother. They’ve never really been huge basketball fans, mostly following the teams I’ve covered and paying attention to the big national headlines to stay current, but with me in the house during the group stage of Olympic basketball, they watched quite a few games over the course of a couple days.
Before I started covering the NBA, when I was still just a fan who didn’t have many friends or family members who shared my junkie-level obsession with basketball, I found that the best way to get people interested enough to watch games with me was to tell them stories about the players. I still do this all the time.
If I’m watching a game with someone who is only casually interested in basketball or not interested at all, I’ll point out players and describe their accomplishments, their early life and career trials, who they are as people off the court, what their families are like.
That’s what I did to keep my parents engaged during the Olympic Games rather than them taking a nap while I took over the television.
This time around, as I was describing the players on the various national teams, even I was amazed at some of the things I was saying.
OK, this guy from Greece, No. 34, Giannis Antetokounmpo, he’s a two-time NBA MVP, former Defensive Player of the Year and 8-time All-Star. When he was a kid in Greece, he and his brother would peddle watches and handbags on the street.
Team USA is obviously the favorite. I mean, you have LeBron James and Steph Curry — you know them — but then you also have other former MVPs on the team, Kevin Durant and Joel Embiid, and then basically everyone on the team is a multi-time All-Star.
France hates Embiid because he has dual citizenship and could have played for them but chose Team USA. He’s from Cameroon. On Black Friday he goes out and buys up tons of TVs and other stuff and then gives them away and sends the money back to people in his home country.
Wait til you see the French team. Rudy Gobert — you know him because he was on the Jazz for a long time — he’s a four-time DPOY and he’s playing with the NBA’s Rookie of the Year, Victor Wembanyama, who is maybe an actual alien. He’s 7′4″ and just insanely skilled. Have you ever seen a 7′4 guy shoot 3s? Well, you will.
Canada’s team is also crazy. NBA players across the roster. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander could have been an MVP, almost was. Lu Dort is one of the best perimeter defenders in the NBA and he wasn’t even drafted. He played in the G League — that’s the NBA’s farm system — and got a little tiny deal with the Thunder and then all of a sudden he’s guarding James Harden and starting games. Some guys just want it bad enough that they’ll make it even when they’re counted out.
Germany and Serbia are the teams that battled for gold in the World Cup last year. Germany won, and they’ve been super staunch about loyalty and chemistry and familiarity on their national team.
Serbia has that guy — Nikola Jokic — he is probably the best basketball player in the world right now, he’s a three-time NBA MVP and he loves horses. The Serbian team can shoot the snot out of the ball, and with Jokic leading the way, they are going to be tough.
My parents loved hearing about all the players and they were really into the games, but the exercise got me even more juiced up about this Olympics.
Roughly 130 NBA and WNBA players were represented on national teams at the Olympics this year. Nearly a third of the NBA is made up of international players. The game is so much more global than it used to be, and it’s given us new names and stars and taken us to parts of the world we might not have otherwise been through the players and their stories.
On Thursday, Team USA needed a miracle-type comeback in order to beat Serbia in a semifinal game that puts them against the hosting French team in the gold medal game on Saturday.
We’ve seen LeBron James defy Father Time once again through these Olympics, we’ve seen Kevin Durant become the all-time leading scorer from the U.S., passing Lisa Leslie. In the semifinal game we saw vintage Steph Curry rain down 3s en route to a win.
We’ve seen upsets for Canada and Germany and seen Giannis Antetokounmpo give every ounce of himself to try to give Greece a chance.
We saw Bogdan Bogdanovic clowning Carmelo Anthony during the best performance of his life, only to have victory snatched away in the final moments and to leave the court in tears.
We’ve seen all-time greats and we’re seeing new stars emerge on the global stage, and at every step it’s been an absolute joy.
I can’t wait for the gold medal game.