2024 Olympic Basketball

Result

The USA's fifth straight gold and 17th overall; Stephen Curry scored 24 points, including four late three-pointers, to seal the win over the host French team led by Victor Wembanyama. [CORRECTION 4 Sep 2026: bronze was previously mislisted as Germany. Serbia actually won bronze, beating Germany 93-83, with Nikola Jokic recording a triple-double — independently confirmed by ESPN, CBS Sports, NBC Sports, Newsweek, and Fox Sports. Germany lost the semifinal to France and then lost the bronze game to Serbia.]

Games

Tournament context

Paris's Olympic basketball tournament delivered the United States' fifth consecutive gold medal and 17th overall since basketball's 1936 Olympic debut, won on foreign soil against the host nation in a final that, for the second Olympics running, matched the Americans against France. The US roster, coached by Steve Kerr and featuring an unusually senior collection of established NBA stars including LeBron James (playing in his fourth Olympics), Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Anthony Edwards, went undefeated through the tournament to reach the final. The gold-medal game, on August 10, 2024, was considerably tighter than the Americans' recent Olympic finals had typically been. The US built an early 14-point lead in the third quarter, but their offense stalled thereafter and France, led by 20-year-old phenom Victor Wembanyama in his first Olympic final, clawed back to within three points; the score stood at just 72-66 for the Americans entering the fourth quarter. Stephen Curry then took over the closing stretch, making four three-pointers in the final two minutes and forty-three seconds of the game, including one with 1:19 remaining that pushed the US lead to nine (93-84) and prompted his now-signature "night-night" celebration gesture. Curry finished with a game-high 24 points; Durant and Booker each added 15, while James — closing out an Olympic career that began in 2004 — contributed 14 points and secured his fourth Olympic medal (third gold). Wembanyama led all scorers for France with 26 points in a losing effort. The final margin, 98-87, understated how competitive the game had been for most of its final quarter before Curry's closing burst put it away. For France, this was the second straight Olympic final loss to the United States (having also fallen 87-82 in Tokyo three years earlier), continuing the program's run as the most persistent modern American rival on the biggest Olympic stage, even as the host nation's home-crowd, Wembanyama-led roster came closer to an upset than most pre-tournament predictions had suggested. The 2024 title extended the United States' current gold-medal streak to five straight Olympiads (2008 through 2024), matching the historical significance basketball historians attach to the original 1936-1968 run of seven consecutive golds, while doing so in an era of dramatically increased international competitiveness compared to that early period — with Curry's star turn, at 36 years old and playing in his first Olympics, becoming the signature individual storyline of what was, for the Americans, both a triumphant and a genuinely hard-fought campaign against a rapidly improving global basketball landscape.

Sources

• ESPN — United States 98-87 France (Aug 10, 2024) Final Score
• Olympics.com — Paris 2024 basketball: Steph Curry soars, US beats France 98-87 for fifth Olympic title
• CBS News — Team USA holds off France to win gold in Olympic men's basketball
• NBC Sports — Nikola Jokic's triple-double leads Serbia past Germany for Olympic bronze
• Newsweek — Nikola Jokic triple-double, Serbia beats Germany for Olympic bronze