Steph maintains selfless attitude amid limited Team USA opportunities originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
Warriors superstar Steph Curry has yet to find his rhythm during his first Olympics appearance, but he’s keeping a positive outlook with Team USA.
Curry, the greatest shooter the game ever has seen, shot the ball just three times in the Americans’ 122-87 rout of Brazil on Tuesday, finishing with seven points and one rebound in nearly 17 minutes.
But the 3-point king is maintaining a selfless attitude about getting limited opportunities on the floor, and he instead is focusing on doing whatever it takes to help the team on its hunt for gold.
“A lot of my job on this team is to create attention and open up shots for other guys,” Curry said postgame (h/t The San Francisco Chronicle’s Ron Kroichick). “I’m not getting a lot of them. So as long as I keep cutting hard, and playing off the ball, we have so many great passers, great finishers, great shooters, somebody is going to get a good look.”
After dropping 11 in his Olympics debut, Curry finished with three points against South Sudan and eight points against Puerto Rico, respectively.
Against South Sudan, Curry made a layup with seven minutes remaining in the game. It was his only bucket of the contest. The 36-year-old was 1-for-9 from the field and missed all of his six 3-point attempts.
Three days later, he showed promise early in Team USA’s dominant victory over Puerto Rico, contributing five first-quarter points before going cold in the second, finishing with eight before being benched in the fourth.
Curry didn’t shoot poorly in Tuesday’s contest, mainly because he didn’t get many shots up.
But his impact, as he attested to, goes beyond what’s shown on a stat sheet. Curry’s presence alone presents a threat on the floor, and his off-ball movement presents openings for himself and others.
In the second quarter, Curry — for just a second — sprung free on a Jrue Holiday screen and launched a heavily contested 3-pointer, drawing a foul and knocking down all his free-throw attempts.
His other points came from open layups, both on passes from LeBron James.
“That’s the beauty and the strength of our team is that it can be any one of these guys,” Team USA coach Steve Kerr said (h/t The Athletic’s Joe Vardon). “They all have to carry their franchises individually when they go back to the NBA. So we know they’re capable of carrying our team on any given day, but we don’t know who it’s going to be, and that’s the strength of the team.”
Curry, once again, hardly impacted Team USA’s scoring on Tuesday.
But the Americans and their depth, once again, proved that they can still annihilate the opposition regardless.
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