Steph Curry has three NBA Championship rings and two NBA MVP trophies to his name, placing him in very exclusive company. But there’s one thing he still has to win that so many basketball players dream of, and it sounds like he might not get the chance to check that box soon.
Curry, of course, never competed in the Olympics. He is a two-time FIBA World Cup gold medalist, but he eventually won the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, where Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Team USA won gold.
Curry, Thompson and Green were all placed among the 44 finalists for the 2020 American Olympic Men’s Basketball Team announced in February, before the coronavirus pandemic shocked the sports world. There is no question that Curry would be in particular part of the group of 12 men who went to the 2021 Games in Tokyo when Team USA sent its very best.
However, it sounds like that will not be the case. According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, there is growing skepticism about NBA elite players taking part in the Olympics, due to the fact that the league has other priorities in the hope of playing a full season with fans next year. .
“For now,” Wojnarowski wrote Saturday, “here’s one idea on the league’s whiteboard, sources said: If the NBA thinks the start of the season could significantly push back to buy time to get fans back in arenas, they brainstorm the idea of a month-long Olympic break reminiscent of how the NHL has handled the Winter Olympics.
“If the pandemic continues, there will be less optimism about the elite players participating in the Olympics – including Americans and international stars. The NBA and NBPA will take positions that the Games are important, but the Olympics are hardly a priority for the owners – – especially if they do not share in the television revenue generated from recording the league’s superstars.Organizations see the wear and tear on players in whom they have invested hundreds of millions of dollars “In the midst of a pandemic, the Olympics mean less to owners, team managers and the NBPA.”
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Even if Team USA wanted Curry – and Thompson and Green for that matter – to play in Tokyo, there is no guarantee that any of them would do so. That trio just got through playing the equivalent of seven NBA seasons while the rest of the league played six, and although the pandemic has created an opportunity for them to recover, it is possible that they may want to save their bodies for NBA League.
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That Curry has yet to participate in an Olympics, perhaps that would be a motivating factor for him to do so. He expressed so much of a longing as recently as March. But as Wojnarowski explained, there are great forces at work against that possibility, and Team USA may look different than it would in a non-pandemic year.
“At the very least,” Wojnarowski said, “Team USA will probably have to be prepared to bring a much younger, less complete roster to Tokyo – a team profile that may eventually reflect the rest of the world’s entrances as well.”
Of course, and can happen between now and the Tokyo Games. But with the exception of significant advances in COVID-19 voting, it looks increasingly unlikely that Curry and other NBA stars will be a part of it.
