ESPN claims the ESPYs “is an event honoring the top athletes and sport performances of the year.” Which automatically makes you think: if it’s about performance, on the biggest possible stage at that, how does Stephen Curry not walk away with that award? It’s not a knock on Simone Biles. God, no. If anything, what she did in Paris was the kind of sustained brilliance we’ve come to expect from her. But let’s not pretend this category was a toss-up. One of these performances cracked the sport wide open. The other was history-shifting, game-deciding, jaw-on-the-floor stuff. The kind that makes you freeze and ask… did that really just happen?
Four Olympic medals, including three golds, defying not just physical odds but the weight of legacy itself. Simone’s comeback story from the Tokyo Games was already historic. What she did in 2024 was history on repeat. But if we’re really talking championship performance… a one-man engine dragging a struggling team to Olympic gold against impossible odds, how on earth did Stephen Curry not get the nod? Time to find out, people.
The United States men’s national basketball team entered Paris under pressure not felt in over a decade. They hadn’t just lost at the FIBA World Cup. They had gone medal-less. The world saw it as a changing of the guard. The U.S.? A dynasty no longer. That failure lit a fire that no motivational speech could match. It triggered a reaction so powerful that it pulled the Avengers out of the shadows: LeBron James. Kevin Durant. Steph Curry. A collective mission, not just to win gold, but to restore it. To prove that they were still the IT men of basketball. And when it came down to who made that mission actually happen?
It wasn’t LeBron’s dunks. It wasn’t KD’s midrange either. Rather, it was Stephen Curry’s backbreaking three-pointers, cold-blooded fourth-quarter runs, and an unshakable sense of calm in moments where the world seemed to spin. Curry rescued Team USA from the brink of embarrassment, and if we’re being honest, possibly… irrelevance, too. But wait, in his first-ever Olympic appearance, Steph himself was the one who stumbled early. The same guy who’d already won three ESPYs before.
Stephen Curry’s Olympic takeover deserved more than a nomination
The group stage wasn’t particularly friendly to him. Critics were loud, memes were louder, and the talk around “Was this a mistake?” echoed across the timeline. But from the quarterfinals on, something shifted. He became inevitable. In the semifinals against Nikola Jokic, widely considered the best basketball player on the planet, Team USA fell behind by 17 points. They entered as 16.5-point favorites. At one point, it looked like Serbia was about to bust the game and the U.S. legacy? Well, wide open. Then Steph happened. Ah, the ultimate Golden Boy!
He exploded for 36 points, went 9-of-14 from deep, and scored 12 of the team’s final 18 points, most of them coming with Nikola Jokic draped all over him. He turned a near-collapse into a comeback that might define his international legacy more than any Finals MVP ever could. And in the gold medal game?
He faced off against Victor Wembanyama. Yep, the 7’4 rookie phenom who had just led France past Canada in the other semi. France kept it close, even took the lead entering the fourth. Then came the avalanche. Four three-pointers. One 30-foot logo bomb that forced France into a timeout. Another dagger after a ridiculous off-ball sequence with LeBron. Stephen finished with 24, but it was when he scored — the timing, the efficiency, the fearlessness — that made it so much more unforgettable.
In clutch moments, defined as the final 3 minutes of close games in both the semifinals and finals, Curry scored 19 points. The rest of Team USA? Just four. Read that again, people. Four. His true shooting percentage in those sequences? A ludicrous 90.0%. That’s not just elite. No.
That’s “this award was made for you” stuff. And he still didn’t win. On top of that, Curry made 17 of 26 threes in the semifinal and final combined. That’s a 65.4% clip. Serbia, as a team, made just 15 in the semis. France? They stayed close until Curry torched them in the fourth with a three-point flurry that had even opposing fans standing. You want impact?
Of the 194 points Team USA scored in those two final rounds, Curry was responsible for 60. That’s 31%. Nearly a third of their offense came from one man, and we’re not even talking assists. That’s not a role player. A system. That’s Steph.
And let’s not forget that had the U.S. lost after stacking their roster with LeBron, Durant, Booker, and AD, the fallout would’ve been unrecoverable. The world was watching. And so was the narrative. But you’ve gotta love the irony that sports are. Because Simone Biles had a near-perfect Olympics.
Biles’ play might’ve been art, but Curry was in a war zone
She entered as the most decorated gymnast in history, male or female, and still managed to add four more golds to her name. Balance beam. Floor. Team. All-around. There was no event she didn’t dominate. She made it look easy. Which, ironically, is part of the reason this race got tricky. There were no major errors. No comebacks from disaster. No needing to erase a deficit. Her performance was that of a legend continuing to be legendary, not one clawing out of doubt to prove herself all over again. But Steph? He entered the Olympics under pressure.
Actual pressure. The kind that whispers, “This is your last shot.” At 36 years old with no Olympic gold, there was no room for error. And when Kawhi backed out with a knee injury, and others faded with injuries of their own, the load shifted heavier onto Curry’s shoulders. And we, he didn’t disappoint! But this wasn’t a “who’s better?” contest. It was a performance-based award. And Stephen’s performance was, without question, one of the greatest we’ve ever seen on a basketball court. But what makes Steph Curry’s performance even more absurd is something few fans even realize.
Aug 10, 2024; Paris, France; United States shooting guard Stephen Curry (4) and guard LeBron James (6) and guard Kevin Durant (7) celebrate with their gold medals on the podium after defeating France in the men’s basketball gold medal game during the Paris 2024 Olympic Summer Games at Accor Arena. Mandatory Credit: Rob Schumacher-USA TODAY Sports
The man used to play with blurred vision. He had a condition called keratoconus, a degenerative eye disease that warps the shape of the cornea, affecting how light enters the eye. Translation? For years, the greatest shooter in NBA history was launching daggers without even seeing the rim crisply. He was officially diagnosed in 2019 and started wearing special contact lenses to correct it, which, ironically, made him even better. But during his 2022 Finals run, while he had access to correction, the legacy of those years playing with a visual disadvantage still lingered for obvious reasons.
Stephen was performing at the highest level, not just with the weight of a dynasty on his back, but with a condition that would sideline most shooters. He didn’t only have the hottest hand here, but also the clearest mind, even when the vision wasn’t. Simone gave us brilliance, yes. But Stephen gave us legacy preservation under duress.
Both are valid. But only one erased a 17-point deficit against the MVP of the NBA, in front of a world waiting for America to fail. So yeah. The ESPYs got it right by nominating him. But did they get it wrong by not letting him finish the job? Because it wasn’t just the gold medal, right? It was the moment. The comeback. And oh, the dagger!
It was Stephen Curry, still finding new ways to shock us, even after we thought we’d seen it all. And the thing about championship performances? Sometimes, they don’t just win games. They keep empires alive. The award may be in Simone Biles’ hands, and rightfully so. But don’t get it confused, because Stephen Curry deserved to be standing right next to her.
Maybe even instead. What do you think, NBA loyalists?
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