Stephen Curry tells the AP why 2024 is the right time for his Olympic debut

Golden State guard Stephen Curry knew he was running out of probabilities to play in whatever got here next their first Olympic Gamesso he and his wife Ayesha began planning many months ago easy methods to make the Paris Games profit their family.

Their growing family, that is.

Ayesha Curry revealed in March that she was pregnant with the couple’s fourth child, with the baby due in June. This is not entirely accidental; the pair were considering ahead, hoping for a transparent July and August Olympics – just in case.

“We thought about it in advance, which was nice,” Curry said. “If the date in a certain month in the fall hadn’t worked out, we would actually have made a different decision knowing that the Olympics were on the cards. Fortunately, the Lord has taken care of us and if everything goes according to plan, I will be available this summer.”

This is indeed the plan. Curry was certainly one of 12 names officially announced Wednesday by USA Basketball as the starting lineup for this yr’s Paris Olympics. It’s entirely possible that the lineup will change by the first training session in early July – injuries or long playoff runs could trigger changes – but Curry has been planning to make his Olympic debut this summer for some time.

“I wanted to play in the last two that I qualified for,” Curry said, referring to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and the Tokyo Games, which were postponed to 2021 because of the pandemic. “Seeing how the guys, from who I have competed for the last 10 years have that experience, winning gold medals, and seeing three of my teammates (Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green) winning gold medals, I knew I wanted to do it.”

It can be logical to assume that a part of the recruiting pitch to Curry this time was the undeniable fact that Steve Kerr, his coach with the Warriors, was coaching the Olympic team.

It really wasn’t. Curry has talked to Durant and LeBron James about combining the teams – talks that were sparked partially by the undeniable fact that the United States took a less star-studded team to the World Cup in Manila last summer and finished fourth – but Kerr didn’t push for his best player to play in that yr.

“He wanted to do it,” Kerr said. “He’s excited. I think 2016 would be the year that would make the most sense. There was a pandemic in 2020. But I never talked to him. Taking part in the finals is tiring, and we went there in 2015 and 2016. Then comes 2021, there was a pandemic, but now it makes sense. This is another box to check in his career.”

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There aren’t lots of these boxes left unchecked. And this really could also be the last one left with any significance.

He is the NBA’s all-time 3-point scorer, four-time NBA Champion, 10-time All-Star, nine-time (and certain soon to be 10-time) All-NBA selection, two-time point scorer, two-time MVP, Finals MVP, All-Star MVP and member of the league’s seventy fifth anniversary team. He even helped create certainly one of the more memorable All-Star moments this yr, when he faced WNBA star Sabrina Ionescu — someone he each mentors and admires — in a 3-point competition.

The heritage has been secure for an extended time. But a bit of more gold won’t hurt.

“That’s the goal,” Curry said.

Curry and the Warriors have won 46 games this season but didn’t make the NBA playoffs, losing to Sacramento in a Champions League qualifying game on Tuesday. Western Conference play-in tournament, 118-94. So the next time he may have a likelihood to play seriously can be July, when the Americans will hold a training camp in Las Vegas. The U.S. Olympics will open on July 28 against Serbia.

Curry has played again and again with the word “USA” on his chest, going back 17 years. He was a part of the U-19 team that won gold at the 2007 Global Games and silver at this yr’s U-19 World Championships. “It burned,” Curry said, “because you don’t like to lose at anything.”

Since then, he has not lost a match for the national team – 18 matches, 18 wins. The Americans won 9-0 on their approach to gold at the 2010 World Championships (now called the World Cup), then lost 9-0 on their approach to one other gold at the 2014 World Championships.

“I definitely wanted that experience,” Curry said of competing in the Olympics. “I believe the moment is right. I’m at a later stage in my profession. This is probably the last likelihood I actually have to play. This made it much easier for me to say, “This makes sense.” And then I talked to another guys who were considering playing, so that you knew it might be an ideal team.