W ith 16 seconds left on the clock at the Bercy Arena, Steph Curry took the ball in centre court, 30 feet from the rim, and already falling backwards, the sky blocked out by two French defenders in front of him, unable to see the basket, milliseconds ticking down before he lost control, before gravity took hold, the day closing in. Somehow from that blind position he still released the ball in a hard flat perfect arc, the roar of the crowd telling Curry he had indeed hit the invisible target beyond the flailing hands. It was a remarkable piece of morse-code accuracy at the best of times.
But by that point Curry was in the middle of his own cold clean moment of clarity, a man playing with a kind of light around him, in the process propelling the USA men’s basketball team on to the gold medal that, for all France’s sweat and heart, always seemed to be theirs for the taking. That three-pointer was Curry’s third in just over two minutes of the final quarter. The second was equally artful in its own way, made by the hilariously casual feint that nobody, even now, seems to be able to read, Curry dropping a shoulder to send the nearest Frenchmen wandering off up the stairs, out of the stadium and down to the Gare de Lyon, then making the net whiffle with startling economy of movement.
Victory by 98-87 in this Paris 2024 final made it five Olympic golds in a row for the US, a feat someone somewhere is probably going to call a five-peat, but which was hard-earned here in a thril.