Follow our Olympic coverage in the lead-up to Paris.
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — LeBron James was genuinely excited to see Stephen Curry in the Bellagio hotel ballroom in Las Vegas on the eve of Team USA training camp.
Born in the same hospital in Akron, Ohio, nearly four years apart, they were co-authors of the last great NBA rivalry and co-residents of the league’s Group C as two of the most famous, respected and Honored current players who will serve as teammates for the first time as co-CEOs of the U.S. Olympic team outside of a meaningless All-Star Game.
When they saw each other on the night of July 5, James, who was wearing a denim jacket and rags, said to Curry, who was wearing a plain white T and a black tank top, “‘It’s about time,’ about (expletive) time.” Cameras Rolling, a microphone hangs above.
About a year ago, in late August 2023, James called Curry and asked if he would be interested in joining the Olympic team. Now, granted, there was no Olympic team when the call came in. The U.S. men’s basketball team participates in the FIBA World Cup, which is a completely independent team and event, and the 12-man roster for the U.S. national team is not usually determined by the players.
But what about players like James or Curry? If they say they want to play for Team USA, they won’t be turned away.
James, 39, has played 21 NBA seasons and is the sport’s all-time scoring leader, four championships (with three different teams; no one before James had led three teams to championships), four MVP and 20 All-Star selections, setting a league record. James, who co-coached the Redemption Team in 2008, is a two-time Olympic gold medalist and the all-time assists leader for the U.S. men’s basketball team. For years, he has been widely considered the “face” of the NBA.
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Curry, 36, has spent 15 NBA seasons changing the way the game is played — not just in the NBA, in America, but around the world. He revolutionized the game with his relentless aerial 3-point attack, hitting (and shooting) more 3-pointers than any other NBA player, although it’s not enough to call him a great shooter. Curry embodies greatness as a winner (four-time NBA champion), performer (two-time MVP, ten-time All-Star) and steward of the Golden State Warriors dynasty.
The two wearing Team USA jerseys at the same time, sharing the same practice field at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NYU Abu Dhabi, and the world’s largest sports stage, the Paris Olympics, was, for anyone lucky enough to see it, no matter what. It’s a surreal sight now and in the future, including for their teammates.
“It’s cool, I’m not going to lie,” said Tyrese Haliburton, 24, a guard for the U.S. team. There are finals every year playing with those guys. I think the more time I spend with them, the more stories and stuff I get to hear, which is really cool because these are things I probably wanted to know when I was 15, 16 years old.
Will Haliburton hear that James and Curry don’t like each other that much? Unlikely, but it happens.
Maybe measuring relationships in terms of “like” or “dislike” is the wrong metric. When Curry was a star at Davidson and led the small school to the 2008 NCAA tournament, James, already an established superstar, watched one of Curry’s games. When Curry was a rookie with the Golden State Warriors in 2009-10, James invited him to his suburban Cleveland home on nights when the Warriors and Cavaliers had an off night. Curry said he could occasionally turn to James for advice.
LeBron James congratulated Stephen Curry after the 2017 NBA Finals. The two stars reached four consecutive finals from 2015 to 2018.
But from 2015 to 2018, James’ Cavaliers and Curry’s Warriors met in the NBA Finals every June. The first three games of the series were tense, and the pressure spilled over into how James and those around him felt about Curry at the time, and vice versa.
In 2015, James’ Cavaliers led 2-1 in the series, only to be beaten and held on by a healthier, deeper Warriors team. The next year, Cleveland became the only team to come back from a 3-1 deficit in the Finals to win; James led the comeback. Curry then recruited Kevin Durant to the Warriors, and while they defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers in five games in the next Finals, the key to the series came when Durant got the 31 points, including the game-winning 3-pointer over James.
From the end of the 2015 Finals to the moment the Cavaliers won in 2016, people close to James often mocked Curry as a rising star, suggesting that Curry unfairly escaped the constant scrutiny James received. To celebrate the 2016 championship, James hosted a Halloween party the following October, using cookies to decorate a tombstone with Curry (and, to be fair, other Warriors stars) on it.
On the other hand, people close to Curry often point out that there seems to be a lot of drama with James’ teams, both with the Cavaliers and before that in Miami. On Martin Luther King Day in 2016, Curry’s Warriors played their first game in Cleveland since winning the 15-year Finals seven months earlier. Curry joked to the visiting team’s locker room: “Hopefully there’s still a little bit of champagne here. After the Warriors won in 2017, someone filmed a cellphone video at Harrison Barnes’ wedding mocking James for being a dancer, and James’ soon-to-be ex Teammate Kyrie Irving laughed hysterically.
Both Curry and James admit there was some tension between them, but that tension has dissipated.
“It’s like having a healthy resentment toward people who hold you back,” Curry said. “But looking through it all, it’s clear that people have the utmost respect for him as a person and as a player, love how good he is and love the challenge of trying to beat him every year and trying to figure this out.”
A few years ago, when a reporter suggested there was an apparent rivalry between him and Curry, James nodded in agreement, though he said the idea “they should hate each other” was a false media narrative. James went on to explain why he wants to make sure this never comes up between him and Corey.
“The game of basketball won’t last forever,” James said. “You don’t want to waste an opportunity to build a relationship with someone.”
Team USA offers LeBron James and Stephen Curry the rare opportunity to become teammates. “Obviously, he was treated with the utmost respect as a person and as a player,” Curry said. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
James said he and Curry “understand” that NBA fans and media of a certain age still view how players should treat each other through the lens of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan in the 1980s. Contempt all opponents.
“A lot of you probably grew up in the Bird Magic era and we weren’t supposed to like each other, but I also (realized) enough to know that Isaiah (Thomas) and Magic hugged and kissed each other during games. Also. Because it’s just mutual respect,” James said. “They say Michael never spoke to any of his opponents, but I’m also smart enough to know that he and Charles (Barkley) had a lot of conversations and played golf with each other during the ’93 Finals.
“So I don’t want to lose those moments (with Cory).”
James and Curry have said over the past two weeks that they enjoy watching each other in practice, learning how each of the larger-than-life superstars operate and learning more about who they are (or, more accurately, who they are) Who has become) off the field since those finals battles.
Durant, another Team USA superstar, said the relationship between James and Curry is stronger because of tensions over the past decade, when they set TV ratings records in June and, among other things, chose basketball together. Center of the Universe, headquartered in Cleveland and San Francisco.
“He’s not the young Steph anymore, he’s not the LeBron you don’t look up to anymore — you become the competitor,” Durant said, explaining how he views the relationship that once existed between James and Curry everything. “I think the level of respect will go up further. I think they’re better friends now than they were when they were going through that experience, competing against each other, being rivals, if you call it that.
“You can see that, you can see how much they respect each other.”
This is about (expletive) time.
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(Above: Dan Goldfarb / Competitor; Photos: Giuseppe Kakas/AFP/Getty Images, Joe Murphy/NBAE/Getty Images)
