Follow our Olympics coverage in the run up to the Paris Games.
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — LeBron James was genuinely excited to meet Stephen Curry in a ballroom at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas on the eve of U.S. team training camp.
Born nearly four years apart in the same hospital in Akron, Ohio, the co-authors of the NBA's last great rivalry and co-habiting in the league's C-suite as its most well-known, respected and decorated active players, the two men will join forces as co-CEOs of the U.S. Olympic team for the first time as teammates outside of a meaningless All-Star Game.
“It's about time, it's about time (expletive),” James, clad in a denim jacket and do-rag, said on the evening of July 5 when he met Curry, clad in a plain white T-shirt and black vest, with cameras rolling and a boom mic dangling overhead.
It was nearly a year ago, in late August 2023, that James called Curry to ask if he'd be interested in joining the Olympic team. Admittedly, at the time of the call, there was no Olympic team yet: USA Basketball was committed to an entirely separate team and event, the FIBA World Cup, and it's not typically up to the players to choose who makes the 12 members of the U.S. national team.
But what about players of James' or Curry's caliber? If they asked to play for the U.S. national team, it's hard to say no.
The 39-year-old James played 21 seasons in the NBA and is the sport's all-time leading scorer, a four-time champion (with three different teams; no one before him had led three franchises to championships), a four-time MVP and a league-record 20-time All-Star. James was co-anchor for the 2008 Redeem Team, is a two-time Olympic gold medalist and is USA Basketball's all-time assists leader. He has been widely considered the “face” of the NBA for many years.
Get the latest sports news delivered to your inbox every day for free. Sign up
Get the latest sports news delivered to your inbox every day for free. Sign up
buy
During his 15 NBA seasons, the 36-year-old Curry has changed the way the game is played not just in the NBA and the United States but around the world. He revolutionized the sport with his relentless aerial attack on three-pointers, made (and shot) more three-pointers than any other player in the NBA, and to call him simply a great shooter would be to grossly underestimate his value. Curry embodies greatness as a winner (four-time NBA champion), performer (two-time MVP, 10-time All-Star) and caretaker of the Golden State Warriors dynasty.
The sight of them both wearing USA uniforms at the same time and playing on the same practice court, whether it be at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the New York University campus in Abu Dhabi or on the world's greatest sporting stage, the Olympic Games in Paris, will be a surreal sight for those privileged to see, including their teammates.
“It's really cool, I'm not gonna lie,” said Tyrese Haliburton, a guard for the U.S. national team who is still just 24. “It's really cool for me as a kid to see these guys that play in the finals every year. I think the more time I spend with them, the more I hear their stories and all the different things. It's really cool, because that's what I probably thought when I was 15, 16.”
Will Haliburton hear stories about times during their careers when James and Curry just didn't like each other very much? Unlikely, but it has happened.
Maybe it's the wrong measure to measure a relationship in terms of love or hate. When Curry was a star at Davidson and led the tiny school to the NCAA Tournament in 2008, James, already an established name, went to watch Curry play. When Curry was a rookie with Golden State in 2009-10, James invited Curry to his home outside Cleveland on days when the Warriors and Cavaliers weren't playing. Curry said he would sometimes ask James for advice.
LeBron James congratulates Stephen Curry after the 2017 NBA Finals. The two stars faced off in four consecutive Finals from 2015 to 2018. (Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images)
But from 2015 to 2018, James' Cavs and Curry's Warriors met in the NBA Finals every June. The first three series were intense, and that stress affected how James and those around him felt about Curry at the time, and Curry was on his guard.
In 2015, James' undermanned Cavs led the series 2-1 but were outplayed and outplayed by the healthier, deeper Warriors. The following year, Cleveland became the only team to come back from a 3-1 deficit to win the Finals, with James leading the comeback. Curry then recruited Kevin Durant to the Warriors, and the Warriors went on to beat Cleveland in five games in the ensuing Finals, but the series was decided by Durant's 31 points in Game 3, including a game-winning three-pointer over James.
From the end of the 2015 Finals until the Cavs' victory in 2016, those close to James mocked Curry's rise, suggesting he'd unfairly escaped the scrutiny James was constantly under. During an extended celebration of the 2016 championship, James hosted a Halloween party the following October, inscribed with cookies as gravestones and the names of Curry (and, to be fair, the Warriors' other stars).
Meanwhile, people close to Curry have often noted that James' teams, whether with the Cavs or Miami before that, have always been riddled with drama. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2016, Curry's Warriors were playing in Cleveland for the first time since winning the 2015 Finals there seven months earlier, and Curry infamously joked about the visiting team's locker room, “Hopefully there's still a little bit of champagne smell in there.” After the Warriors won in 2017, Curry was seen on cellphone video at Harrison Barnes' wedding mocking James for being a dancer. James' future teammate Kyrie Irving was laughing out loud.
Both Curry and James acknowledged there was some tension between them that has since been resolved.
“It's like a healthy resentment towards anyone who gets in your way,” Curry said, “but through it all, there was obviously the utmost respect for who he is as a person and as a player and how good he is and the challenge every year of beating him and solving that problem.”
James nodded in agreement when a reporter suggested there was an apparent rivalry between him and Curry a few years ago, but said the idea that “they should hate each other” was a misrepresentation in the media. James went on to explain why he wants to make sure that never happens between him and Curry.
“The game of basketball doesn't last forever,” James said. “You don't want to waste an opportunity to build a relationship with somebody.”
Team USA gave LeBron James and Stephen Curry the rare opportunity to be teammates. “Obviously, I have the utmost respect for him as a person and as a player,” Curry said. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
James said he and Curry “understand” that NBA fans of a certain age, and the media, view how players should treat each other through the rivalries between Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics in the 1980s, or the disdain Michael Jordan showed for nearly every opponent during his dominating 1990s.
“Many of you grew up in the Bird-Magic era and may not have liked each other, but I know Isaiah (Thomas) and Magic hugged and kissed on the court because they respected each other,” James said. “They say Michael never talked to his opponents, but I know he and Charles (Barkley) had a lot of conversations and played golf together in the '93 Finals.
“So I don't want to miss that moment (with Curry).”
James and Curry said they've enjoyed watching each other practice over the past two weeks, learning how each transcendent superstar approaches their job and getting to know who they are off the court – or, more specifically, how they've grown since the Finals.
Durant, Team USA's other superstar, said the strengthening relationship between James and Curry was due to tensions from a decade ago when the franchise set television viewership records in June and dominated the basketball capital with headquarters in Cleveland and San Francisco.
“He's not the young Steph anymore, he's not the Bron that he looked up to. He's become a competitor,” Durant said, explaining how he viewed the relationship that once existed between James and Curry. “I think the level of respect is even higher. I think they're better friends now than they were when they went through that experience where they were competing with each other and they were rivals.”
“You can see how much respect they have for each other.”
It's about (expletive) time.
Going deeper
Anthony Davis' solid play for USA poses a challenge for Steve Kerr
(Illustration above: Dan Goldfarb / AthleticPhotos: Giuseppe Cacase/AFP/Getty Images, Joe Murphy/NBAE/Getty Images
