Golden State guard Stephen Curry knew he was running out of chances to play in what would be his first Olympics, so he and his wife Ayesha started planning many months ago about how to make the Paris Games work for their family.
Their growing family, that is.
Ayesha Curry revealed in March that she is pregnant with the couple’s fourth child and the baby is due in June. That’s not entirely by accident; the couple thought ahead with hopes of keeping the Olympic months of July and August clear — just in case.
“We thought about it ahead of time, which was nice,” Curry said. “If the timing didn’t work at a certain month in the fall, we actually would have made a different decision knowing the Olympics were on the radar. So, thankfully, the Lord looked out for us and if everything goes to plan, I’ll be available this summer.”
That is, indeed, the plan. Curry was one of the 12 names formally announced by USA Basketball on Wednesday as the initial roster for this year’s Paris Olympics. It’s entirely possible that the roster gets tweaked between now and the first practice in early July — injuries or long playoff runs could spark changes — but Curry has been planning to make his Olympic debut this summer for some time.
“I wanted to play in the last two that I was eligible for,” Curry said, referring to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and the Tokyo Games that were delayed to 2021 because of the pandemic. “Watching guys that I’ve been competing against the last 10 years all have that experience win gold medals, watching three of my teammates (Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green) win gold medals, I knew I wanted to do that.”
It would be logical to think that part of the recruitment pitch to Curry this time around was the fact that the Olympic team is coached by Steve Kerr, his coach with the Warriors.
That wasn’t really the case. Curry had talks with Durant and LeBron James about teaming up — those talks sparked in part by the U.S. taking a less star-studded team to the World Cup at Manila last summer and finishing fourth — but Kerr wasn’t pushing his best player to play this year.
“He wanted to do it,” Kerr said. “He’s excited. I think 2016 would have been the year that made the most sense. In 2020, there was the pandemic. But I’ve never had the discussion with him. Going to the Finals wears you down and we had gone in 2015 and 2016. Then 2021…