As Staff USA’s women and men pursue their fifth and eighth consecutive gold medals on the 2024 Paris Olympics, respectively, a choose group of people may etch their names in Olympic lore. A few of these potential information are so monumental that they transcend basketball and put some athletes in rarefied air.
A fourth gold medal and extra
Kevin Durant is motivated to take the journey to Paris regardless of coping with a calf pressure. Two prestigious information are up for grabs for the Suns star.
First, Durant can change into the first male athlete to win 4 gold medals in a staff sport, following Staff USA’s wins within the 2012, 2016 and 2020 Video games. France’s Nikola Karabatic will obtain the identical feat if he can lead his nation to gold in males’s handball.
Second, Durant is simply 54 factors shy of surpassing Lisa Leslie’s report for many Olympic factors throughout women and men. The sharpshooting ahead already holds the report for many factors (435) and PPG (19.7) in males’s Staff USA historical past.
First to a sixth Olympiad
Staff USA’s Diana Taurasi and Spain’s Rudy Fernandez are set to change into the primary basketball gamers to compete at six Olympics. Each made their debuts on the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Taurasi already shares the report (with Sue Chook) for many Olympic golds in a staff sport, with 5 gold medals by means of the 2004 and 2020 Video games. With a sixth gold medal, Taurasi will lengthen her report because the athlete with essentially the most Olympic gold medals in any staff sport.
The oldest American debutant
Stephen Curry will make his long-awaited Olympic debut in Paris. At 36, he’ll change into the oldest basketball participant to debut for Staff USA since Larry Chook, who was 35 years and 240+ days when he performed for the Dream Staff on the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
On a associated notice, LeBron James, 39, will change into the oldest hooper to ever symbolize Staff USA, surpassing the earlier report set by Chook in 1992. The 2024 Paris Olympics will mark James’ return to the Olympic stage for the primary time in a decade. He didn’t play in 2016 and 2020.
A shot at immortality
This one is not a person report however one that can really spotlight American girls’s dominance of Olympic basketball. Since their loss to the Soviets within the semifinals of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, the American girls have gone 56-0 en path to seven consecutive gold medals.
An eighth consecutive gold medal in Paris would give them the report for essentially the most consecutive Olympic gold medals in any staff sport, surpassing their male U.S. counterparts, who received seven golds between the 1936 Berlin Olympics and 1960 Rome Olympics.
