The American Basketball Association confirmed on Wednesday that NBA stars LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Joel Embiid and Jason Tatum will form the main pillar of the “Dream Team” seeking its fifth Olympic gold in Paris this summer.
The federation revealed the list of 12 players that ESPN and The Athletic website announced two days ago, 11 of them to restore the glory of their country’s national team, which finished the 2023 World Cup in fourth place, by retaining the Olympic title that has not eluded the Americans since they won it. He won the bronze medal in 2004 in Athens, when Argentina won the gold medal.
In addition to Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James, who has expressed several times his desire to attract big names from the NBA to Paris, Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry will participate in the first Olympics in his professional career.
With them will be the Phoenix Suns winger and Curry’s former Warriors teammate, Kevin Durant, who has participated in the Olympic Games continuously since 2012, and a fourth player who will be crowned the best player in the NBA (in 2023) in the person of the Philadelphia 76ers’ centerpiece, Joel Embiid, of Cameroonian origin. He was recently naturalized.
The team, which will be supervised by Warriors coach Steve Kerr, will include other Lakers stars Anthony Davis and the Miami Heat’s Bam Adebayo, the Boston Celtics’ Jason Tatum and Jrue Holiday, Durant’s teammate in Phoenix Devin Booker, and the young Anthony Edwards and Tyrese Haliburton, the only ones who were part of the United States squad in the 2023 World Cup.
The last player was Los Angeles Clippers star Kawhi Leonard.
“We are grateful to this amazing group of players, people who understand very well what is at stake, and are all committed to being part of this amazing journey,” US national team managing director Grant Hill said in a press conference.
“We are looking forward to coming together and certainly striving for the gold medal, which is ultimately the gold standard by which we measure,” he added.
He continued that the painful disappointment in the World Cup highlighted the need for a high-quality defense, and the selection of Embiid, Davis, and Adebayo gives the team a strong physical presence.
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