PARIS — When LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant so publicly committed to playing for Team USA at the Olympics nearly one year ago, Grant Hill knew he couldn’t say “no” to any of them.
But their presence on the roster created a challenge for Hill, whose job it is to build out USA Basketball teams for the Olympics and World Cup; a pressing question he felt he would need an alternate plan for in case the answer wasn’t the one he’d hoped for.
What if “Bron,” “Steph,” and “KD” — nicknames associated with NBA and international greatness — couldn’t play to that level anymore?
“I respect how hard it is to be excellent at that age,” Hill said Wednesday in an interview with The Athletic about the current state of Team USA, which sits just two wins from a fifth consecutive Olympic gold medal.
“I also know, like, it can be exhausting, and the summer is an important part of your preparation for the upcoming NBA season,” Hill continued. “So I didn’t know what they had. Like I didn’t know fully what level they would play at. You can hope that they play at a certain level. So there was some uncertainty, I’ll be honest.”
No USA men’s team can be judged by the process; only the results. If the U.S. beats Serbia in an Olympic semifinal on Thursday, and then either Germany or France on Saturday in the gold-medal match, then the roster Hill pieced together around three all-time greats who are nearing the ends of their careers will be considered a smashing success.
And should the Americans lose either of these next two games, there will be rounds of criticism from the outside and serious soul-searching on the part of Hill, USA Basketball executives, and coaches about how to respond for the next Olympics, which are on U.S. soil in Los Angeles in 2028.
But for now, the uncertainty Hill admitted to about building a USA team around James, 39, Curry, 36, and Durant, 35, is the key to the two most important developments with the Americans this summer.
For one, it illustrates just how good James has been for Team USA, rising to a level neither Hill nor several others inside the program knew he would reach.
Secondly, it explains why the U.S. team broke from past practice of tabbing eight or nine NBA star-level players and mixing them with three role players to form an Olympic team. Hill overloaded Team USA with talent as a “just in case,” and it has led to some uncomfortable decisions for coach Steve Kerr. He’s had to, at times, bench a three-time first-team All-NBA forward in Jayson Tatum, and a former NBA MVP in Joel Embiid at the Olympics because there are only so many minutes available in a 40-minute game.
There are 11 current or former NBA All-Stars on the team, a USA Basketball record, and it would have been 12 if the Americans hadn’t decided to send Kawhi Leonard home in early July and replace him with Derrick White.
Hill said another reason for focusing on talent, instead of mixing talent with role players, was the versatility of the international field at the Paris Games. Canada and South Sudan were guard-heavy; Germany and France, both still alive in the tournament, are massive up front. Serbia doesn’t have the quickness of the Americans but is disciplined, big, and can shoot 3s.
The Americans wanted to make sure they had the best players available to play against every style they would see in France. The way LeBron and Durant have played, and the pressure Curry puts on opposing defenses by simply playing on the court, has overpowered every opponent they’ve seen so far at the Olympics.
“Maybe it’s being paranoid, but what if LeBron at 39 1/2 years old, can’t be at that level? Then what?” Hill asked, rhetorically. And then he pointed out that the opposite turned out to be true. “He’s far exceeded that, and if anything he came in (to training camp) in probably the best shape (of any player on Team USA). He was the best player in the exhibition games and at times has been our best player in (Olympic) games thus far.
“So it was a unique set of circumstances,” Hill continued. “For our seasoned guys, what do they have? Father Time catches up. So I think that played a role a little bit in the depth as well.”
“I respect how hard it is to be excellent at that age,” Grant Hill says. Three U.S. stars — LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant — are over 35. (Brian Babineau / NBAE via Getty Images)
James is no longer Team USA’s leading scorer for the summer — Anthony Edwards passed him up in the Americans’ 122-87 win over Brazil in a quarterfinal match on Tuesday. But James is second on the team with 14.2 points, he’s up to 5.5 assists per game, and is still shooting a team-best 64 percent from the field. Beyond the numbers, the speed at which James plays, the attention to detail on defense, and the way he overpowers opponents have inspired his teammates. He’s played 21 NBA seasons and this is his fourth Olympics.
Durant’s entire preseason was derailed by a calf injury — which underscored Hill’s decision to backfill behind Durant with megastars like Devin Booker and Tatum. He didn’t play until the Olympic opener and shocked Serbia by scoring 23 points off the bench on 8-of-9 shooting. Durant has settled comfortably on Kerr’s second unit, averaging 16 points in three Olympic games. If the U.S. gets into a situation where it needs a bucket down the stretch to win, Durant would be as much of a candidate as James to take that shot — a welcome and surprise circumstance given Hill’s stated uncertainty of how they’d hold up.
Curry has not had the summer he’d envisioned statistically, but it isn’t because of his age or declining skills. He’s not shot well, but he also isn’t shooting all that often. He has yet to attempt 10 shots in an Olympic game, but he continues to draw the attention of opposing defenses that are terrified of him getting loose for open shots on the perimeter — where he is the best shooter who ever lived. Curry is averaging 10.1 points and still leads the Americans with 19 3s for the summer, but Edwards is just two 3-pointers behind him.
Eight of USA’s 12 players are averaging at least 17 minutes per game (the games are 40 minutes, compared to 48 in the NBA). The players getting fewer than 17 minutes a night are Embiid (11.9), Tatum (11.1), White (14.7), and Tyrese Haliburton (9.8). Embiid and White are only 30, and all four of these players, barring injury, would be obvious candidates for the next Olympic team.
“You can’t keep everyone happy, but I think you win a gold medal and everyone feels like they contributed,” Hill said. “I think people will come out of this with a positive outlook on the entire experience. And, you know, we’ll have to revamp and figure things out in four years, but, right now my only goal is to win, to win this gold medal.”
Another continuous subplot at the Paris Olympics has been the French fans’ vitriolic reaction to Embiid, who chose to play for the U.S. instead of France (he has citizenship in both countries and was born in Cameroon, but has only lived in the U.S. since he was a teenager).
Hill said he hasn’t been surprised by how Embiid has been received in France, but believes Embiid plays his best when he can be the antagonist in front of a hostile crowd. Hill also said Embiid was so sick before the Olympics opener against Serbia that he had to travel separately from the team from Paris to Lille, arriving the day of the game and logging about 11 minutes. Kerr didn’t play Embiid at all in the Americans’ second game against South Sudan.
Embiid’s best game with Team USA was Tuesday night against Brazil, when he scored 14 points with seven rebounds on 5-of-6 shooting, all in the first half. He didn’t play the second half of a blowout win out of precaution with ankle soreness.
“There was just a lot of noise around him, with his situation,” Hill said. “We knew he was going to have a big moment soon. … We’re very excited where he’s at, and I expect he’ll play well these next two games.”
The Americans outscored their first four opponents at the Olympics by a combined 99 points. There were two near losses during the exhibition season, against South Sudan and Germany, both in London. Hill said when this team hasn’t played well, it’s been because “we’ve gotten bored” — which largely hasn’t been a problem at this tournament.
Hill said this iteration of Team USA hasn’t reached its full potential yet, and at the same time, doesn’t need to have all 12 players performing their best to win. He said it could take six players, or as few as two or three performing as the best version of themselves to get the job done.
It just so happens that one of the USA players who is operating at such a high level is LeBron.
“The things that have surprised me (about LeBron) are his level of fitness, his level of play, and his overall leadership,” Hill said. “To see sort of everything he brings to the equation on a daily basis … I think it is endearing as a teammate, and is part of why he’s been so successful over the entirety of his career.”
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(Top photo of Grant Hill during USA Basketball training camp in July: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
