Stephen Curry has never played in an Olympics for the Team USA basketball team. He sure looked ready to lead the United States to big thing in Paris this summer.
The Golden State Warriors star point guard was excellent on Wednesday, scoring 12 points to go along with three assists in the Americans 86-72 victory over Canada.
Anthony Edwards led all scorers with 13 points, while LeBron James (seven points, five rebounds, three assists) and Anthony Davis (10 points, 11 rebounds) had strong performances for the United States.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (10) and RJ Barrett (12) led the way for Canada.
But after a slow start, the United States dominated, and fans and pundits alike were particularly impressed with the trio of Curry, James and AD:
It was not such a great Team USA debut for Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid, who fouled out and only managed five points, six rebounds and four turnovers in 12 minutes, shooting 2-of-5 from the field.
In general, there will be rust to work off for the team at large beyond just Embiid, and head coach Steve Kerr will experiment with different lineups and combinations to maximize the enormous amount of talent he has at his disposal.
James thinks the team is on the right path.
“We know we’re a lot better [then what we showed], but we’ve only been together four days,” he said after the contest. All the miscues offensively, we’ll get better with that. But as long as we defend, we’re going to give ourselves a good chance to win every night.”
“We just want to win gold. Whatever that takes,” Curry added. “We always talk about, no matter what your stats are, no matter how many minutes you play, if everyone on the floor commits to just doing what you’re asked to do, we’ll be good.”
Given the talent on hand, if the United States coalesces into a cohesive unit, no team in the world will stop them.