Team USA men's basketball is heading back to the gold medal game after a frantic 95-91 win against Serbia in the semifinals at the 2024 Paris Olympics on Thursday. The Americans, who entered as 15.5-point favorites, trailed by as many as 17 points in the first half and entered the fourth quarter down 13. They were in serious trouble basically the entire game, but when it came down to it, they outscored Serbia by 17 points in the final 10 minutes as Stephen Curry, LeBron James, Joel Embiid and Kevin Durant led the late push.
USA Basketball, in search of its fifth consecutive gold medal, will face host country France and Victor Wembanyama for gold on Saturday. Serbia will go up against Germany for bronze.
Curry had his best game of the Paris Olympics with arguably one of the most important performances of his life, finishing with a team-best 36 points, one shy of Carmelo Anthony's Team USA single-game Olympic record, which he set in 2012 in an 83-point win over Nigeria.
Embiid hit some crucial fourth-quarter buckets and finished with 19 points. James added 16 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists for the second Olympic triple-double of his career. Durant finished with nine points but he hit two of the biggest shots of the game, which is what we're about to get into.
The anatomy of every comeback is different, and it always comes down to a lot more than shooting. You have to defend, which the Americans dialed up. You have to secure rebounds, because extra possessions kill you when you are trying to string together a run. But in the end, you have to make shots. As the clock ticked down on this one, just about every shot the Americans took carried more weight than the last.
But looking back, considering time and score and everything else that one would factor into the magnitude of a particular bucket, these were the six most important shots, in the order in which they happened, that Team USA hit on its way to one of the wildest rallies -- considering the tournament stage and stakes -- in Olympic history.
1. LeBron fadeaway to start the fourth
After Durant ended the third quarter with a huge shot to send the Americans into the final 10 minutes with at least a slice of positive momentum, James got things rolling in the fourth quarter with a tough, 15-foot elbow fadeaway (which you can see at the 0:24 mark here) to cut into Serbia's lead.
A mid-range jumper that still left the Americans down double digits might not seem like much in the totality of the final quarter the Americans put together, but it was absolutely essential that Team USA start cutting into Serbia's lead immediately once the fourth quarter began. Had Serbia's 13-point lead grown larger by even a few points, the likelihood of a USA comeback would've started going down exponentially.
I obviously can't say this with any sort of certainty, but my gut tells me that whoever scored first to open the fourth quarter was going to win that game. Sort of like Serbia hitting the 3 to start overtime in the team's 24-point comeback vs. Australia in the quarterfinals.
You consider the alternative of LeBron missing this shot, after Curry had missed a forced scoop shot to begin the quarter, and Serbia going down and pushing the lead to 15 or 16, and you can sense, even in hindsight, how desperate things would've felt.
LeBron making this shot was a stay of execution. A little bit of hope. And you sense that LeBron felt the enormity of that, too, because he willed this shot into the basket. His space was crowded. He had to pivot and put his shoulder into his defender and fall away to even clear enough space to get it off.
It was no swish. It sort of rattled in. But this wasn't about beauty. This was a guts shot, telling of the "I'm not going to let us lose this game" mentality with which LeBron played the final frame of one of the most exhilarating Olympic games you might ever see.
2. Durant hits a 3 to start a run
The Americans were still down 11 with a little over seven minutes to play when Durant caught a skip pass from LeBron and splashed home a wing 3 (you can see it at the 4:57 mark here).
Not only did this shot feel like the point that the Americans transitioned from "just stay afloat" to "we're about to put the pedal down" mode, but it coincided with Nikola Jokic running through Anthony Davis' screen for a simultaneous foul, which gave the ball back to the Americans for a double-dip possession.
3. Booker goes back-to-back with KD
Devin Booker has clearly earned Steve Kerr's confidence. He has been the starter over Jayson Tatum, who took his second DNP of these Olympics against Serbia, and he got the crunch-time minutes over Anthony Edwards and Jrue Holiday when everything was on the line.
Booker didn't score much in this game, finishing with six points on four shots, but to call the 3 he hit to back up Durant's aforementioned 3, cutting Serbia's lead to five, a big shot would be an understatement. Durant's 3 was big, but an eight-point lead is still decently comfortable. A five-point lead is Dale Earnhardt showing up in your rearview mirror, when you've led comfortably all day, with 10 laps to go.
After Durant's 3, this was effectively a six-point possession for the Americans. In the NBA, this would not have been possible; Durant's 3 would've counted, and Anthony Davis, fouled away from the shot, would have been awarded one free throw. But FIBA rules count the 3 and, instead of sending anyone to the line for a free throw, award a whole new possession to the offended team. Booker pressed Durant's bet by rolling his own triple and Serbia went from up 11 to up five without touching the ball.
4. Embiid's 3-point play
It came with five minutes to play and as part of a personal seven-point run for Embiid. He was making up for his own mistakes, as he was unable to corral two rebounds that were in his grasp on the previous two possessions, both of which led to second-chance buckets for the Serbians, but this three-point play on a hit-ahead pass from LeBron brought the Americans to within four, the closest they had been since early in the first quarter (you can see his bucket at the 0:50 mark here).
Embiid finished with 19 points on 8-of-11 shooting. As part of this three-bucket run, he hit his patented pull-up jumper from the free-throw line and a silky fadeaway from the right block sandwiched around the and-one finish with his right from the left side while almost falling out of bounds.
Embiid started to get going against Puerto Rico, then had his best game of the tournament to that point with 14 points in one half of play against Brazil in the first knockout round, paving the way for an essential contribution against Serbia. Make no bones about it: USA loses this game by a wide margin without Embiid.
5. Curry's go-ahead 3
You could argue this was the biggest shot of Curry's career: a 3-pointer with 2:24 to play to give the U.S. its first lead since Curry hit the first shot of the game 11 seconds into the first quarter.
This was great recognition by Embiid to set a screen for Curry after it initially looked like he was going to go the other way, perhaps to the high post for an entry pass from LeBron. Curry came off clean and rattled home one of the defining shots of his entire life, and the Americans never trailed again.
Curry has accomplished pretty much everything there is to accomplish in the game of basketball except winning an Olympic gold medal. He had not had a good tournament to this point in his first Olympics, but he absolutely saved the day when the Americans needed him most. His 36 points, on nine 3-pointers, goes down as the second-highest single game Olympic performance in U.S. men's basketball history, one off Carmelo Anthony's 37 piece in 2012.
It's worth noting, however, that Anthony's 37 came in an 83-point win over Nigeria in 2012. The Americans needed every single one of Curry's 36 points. This was arguably the most important individual performance in U.S. men's Olympic history.
6. Durant ices win with iso jumper
After Curry's heroics, the Americans still needed one more bucket to seal the win. Down two with the clock ticking below 40 seconds, Serbia still had a chance to get a stop and have one more possession to tie the game or take the lead, but Durant refused to let it get that far, calling for an isolation at the top of the key and getting into his classic crossover for a dagger pull-up jumper from just inside the 3-point line (you can see it at the 6:40 mark here).
Only Durant can make that shot look so effortless. That is a highly contested 20-footer off the dribble with a potential Olympic gold medal on the line, and he stuck that thing like he was getting in some summer work in an empty high school gym. What a player. What a game.
