In the build-up to this year’s Summer Olympic Games in Paris, the United States men’s basketball team has proven disappointing in its recent inconsistent success in international basket matches. For starters, the team had a terrible campaign during the 2019 Basketball World Cup, finishing in an appalling seventh place. Though Team USA won gold in the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021, they did lose to France in the group stage round, which made it their first Olympic loss since 2004. Outside of the Olympics, performances could have been more impressive. In the 2023 Basketball World Cup, Team USA failed to return home with a medal after losing to Canada in a match for third place.
After the lackluster performance in the 2023 World Cup, rumors started to go around the internet in September that Lebron James was recruiting world-class superstars like Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, and Joel Embid to join the national team for the 2024 Paris Olympics. While many believe that the cause of this Avengers-like assembly of NBA all-stars was the lack of veterans on the USA international teams, we believe that American sprinter Noah Lyles triggered Lebron’s assembly of his variation of the Dream Team.
At the 2023 Track & Field World Championships, Noah Lyles became a three-time gold medalist by winning the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m relay. In his post-tournament interview, Lyles expressed his thoughts on being a world champion, prompting him to critique the NBA’s titling of championship teams. “You know, the thing that hurts me the most is that I have to watch the NBA Finals, and they have ‘World Champion’ on they head. World champion of what? The United States?” quipped Lyles, “Don’t get me wrong, I love the US - at times - but that ain’t the world. We are the world. We have almost every country out here fighting, thriving, putting on their flag to show they are represented. There ain’t no flags in the NBA.”
Lyles’ comments led to many NBA players and fans responding on X (formerly known as Twitter) to criticize the comments.
We do not believe it was a coincidence that he bashed the NBA around the same time Team USA failed to secure a bronze medal. If Lyles had wanted to criticize the idea of American sports organizations crowning themselves as “World Champions,” he could have quickly gone after the NFL, which barely has any players competing outside the United States.
How did Lebron’s Avengers respond? Team USA fought through the Paris Olympics to secure the country's seventh team gold medal. Lebron led the team, averaging 14.2 points, 8.5 assists, and 6.8 rebounds per game while shooting 66 percent from the field. Stephen Curry averaged 14.8 points, 2.5 rebounds, and 3.2 rebounds per game while shooting a combined 65.4 percent against Serbia and France to earn his first Olympic gold medal. Durant also averaged 13.8 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 2.3 assists, which helped him get his fourth gold medal, passing Carmelo Anthony for most Olympic gold medals on the men’s team.
After the USA Basketball captured gold, Lyles commented on the team’s success by saying, “It’s not a thing of if I consider or not, It’s…they are. They’re Olympic Champions, and in the Olympic championship, you face the whole world. And, of course, they came out on top, and of course, I knew they would. Because we have some of the greatest athletes, but they saw you can’t just slap everybody together and say, ‘This is a great team.’”
While Lyles praised Team USA, refusing to say they are a great team just sounds like the sprinter seems a bit butthurt to us. If winning an Olympic gold medal while being undefeated through the entire tournament isn't great, we don’t know what it is. As far as we’re concerned here at Vintage & Coupe, winning a gold medal at the 2024 Olympic Games for the seventh time in a row very much makes the NBA players World Champions who are “putting on their flag to show they are represented.”
The real question now is, where does USA basketball on the international stage go from here? You must be wondering as a reader why we would ask that when they had just had a successful campaign in Paris. While the US Avengers seem to be unstoppable on the court, their kryptonite, as of now, is Father Time himself.
This year's Olympics may have been Lebron James’ last Olympic performance at 39 years old (which makes him a grandpa in the sports world). While he is aging on paper, Lebron does not show any form of performance decline any time soon. However, Lebron has recently mentioned that he does not see himself playing in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. We’ll see how he feels about it closer to 2026 or 2027.
Kevin Durant’s future with the team is uncertain. While there are no reports of Durant returning, Team USA basketball officials said they would give him a provisional yes for a spot on the team. We think that Durant will not return in 2028. Now that he has the most Olympic medals for a male player in Team USA basketball history, Durant has nothing else to prove.
Stephen Curry’s moves may be the hardest to predict. At 36 years old, with his first Olympic medal, time is not exactly on his side. Despite this, it would be understandable that Curry may be hungry for more medals following his electrifying performance in Paris. While we don’t see him passing the medal count of Durant, Curry may take on Lebron’s mantle of veteran leader and assemble Team USA on another campaign of seizing Olympic gold in 2028.
If Noah Lyles’ comments managed to spark the unstoppable force that was the American men’s basketball team this year, we can only imagine what the mere thought of winning on home soil would inspire. We at Vintage & Coupe are on standby for what could be an Avengers: Endgame scale roster.
