Team USA Aiming To Get Steph Curry Going

July 30, 2024

Golden State Warriors star guard Stephen Curry is shooting to perform significantly better against South Sudan than he did in Team USA’s opening win over Serbia.

Curry finished with 11 points, three assists and three rebounds in 21 minutes in what became a blowout win. But eight of those points came when the outcome was pretty much decided, as noted by Sam Amick of The Athletic.

“I had a lot of nerves pregame, up until the national anthem,” Curry said, via Amick. “It was a really cool environment in there. It obviously was sold out to the nosebleeds. The energy was great. Putting on this jersey at this level — I’ve been looking forward to it for a very long time, and I’m just enjoying the moment. That’s why you see me so animated, from opening ceremony to tonight when I’m on the bench. I’m loving it. So I want to have something to show for it at the end too.”

Luckily for Curry, the coach of Team USA is also his coach with the Warriors. That would be no less than Steve Kerr.

“A slow start for Steph (against Serbia),” Kerr said, via Amick. “But you see the impact he makes. He comes flying off a double (team), and (LeBron James) throws it into Jrue Holiday for a layup because they’re terrified of Steph. So the beauty of Steph is that whether he makes shots or not, he impacts the game because he scares the other team. Just the threat of Steph impacts the game.”

The Americans barely beat South Sudan in an Olympics warmup, 101-100, after a driving layup from James with 8 seconds to go. South Sudan has only been a country since 2011 but already has an Olympics victory, topping Puerto Rico in the Paris opener.

Curry scored 24 points with six threes in last week’s exhibition matchup against South Sudan.

“This is our sixth game together, and I won’t even count the first one because nobody was in shape,” he said, via Amick. “So it’s a weird dynamic of you understanding the sense of urgency of the moment, of having to try to play your best every night, but being comfortable with the uncomfortable nature of (the fact that) you don’t know how it’s gonna look every single night. You don’t know who’s gonna get on a heater. It’s gonna be (Kevin Durant vs. Serbia), it could be somebody else Wednesday. And that’s just the beauty of this team.”