In just 51 days, the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad — better known as the 2024 Summer Olympics — will begin with opening ceremony at the Jardins du Trocadéro in Paris, France. Just two days later, the USA Basketball team will be playing their first game of the tournament as they aim to win their fifth consecutive Olympic Gold Medal.
Team USA will enter the Olympics as the considerable favorite to take home the Gold, not only because the roster that has been built by managing director Grant Hill is that talented, but also because of the USA Basketball Team's track record of dominance at the Summer Olympics. But recent years have taught us that the USA's grip on world basketball dominance may be slipping. Even though Team USA won Gold in Tokyo in 2021, they dropped a preliminary round game to France (their first preliminary round loss since 2004) and were pushed to the limit a number of times throughout the tournament.
Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo was a member of Team USA in 2021, so he knows all too well how rapidly the rest of the world is catching up. And today, during an appearance on the Point Game Podcast, Adebayo offered a stern warning to the other eleven members of Team USA who will be aiming to once again re-establish worldwide basketball supremacy this summer in Paris.
“Kevin Durant is one of the best scorers, if not the, that’s walked through this league, understandably. So as a person you can’t be like, ‘nah bro, I’m going to go get my 15 shots.' It’s like, that’s not how it works in the Olympics, big guy. That was really the eye-opener for me in the first one, being able to sit in that room and to be honest, like listen, we all can’t get our clips that we get on our regular teams. Somebody’s going to have to sacrifice, you might be like, ‘this ain’t my job to score, I’ve got to defend and rebound.'”
Bam Adebayo is the perfect guy for a role like this, but not everyone on the extremely-talented Team USA basketball roster fits that description to a tee. In fact, you could argue that Adebayo and Jrue Holiday are the only two players who don't regularly get all of the shots they want for their respective NBA teams. But if recent history has taught us anything, it's that the guys who come to play for Team USA have done a great job of checking their ego at the door and doing whatever is needed from them in order to capture the Gold.
Who will start for Team USA in the 2024 Olympics?
Now that's a good question! And it's one that Bam Adebayo took a diplomatic attempt at answering during his podcast appearance.
“I mean, they’re calling this The Avenger Team, it’d probably be Bron, K.D., Steph, you got to put Joel in there and then the 5th one is kind of like the wild card. It really depends on how those four fit the last person. So I can’t give you that last person.”
I'll take a stab at it… Anthony Edwards feels like the logical choice, given his position fit along with those four players that Adebayo mentioned, and due to his ascendance for Team USA last year during the 2023 FIBA World Cup. Devin Booker, Kawhi Leonard and Jayson Tatum are solid options for that fifth starter spot as well. If the Boston Celtics win the NBA Title and Jayson Tatum takes home the Finals MVP, it would be hard to imagine him not starting for Team USA this summer.
Top to bottom, this is without question one of the most talented and star-studded lineups that has ever represented the United States in the Summer Olympics. But as I mentioned before, the rest of the world is catching up, and in host nation France — led by NBA Rookie of the Year Victor Wembanyama and Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert — the U.S. may have a challenger who can push them to the limit.
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