The Six Biggest Questions for NBA Fans at the 2024 Paris Olympics

The run-up to the 2024 Paris Olympics has felt like a bizarro appendage to the last NBA season.

The quest for gold in men’s basketball this summer will feature 75 players with NBA experience, including eight of the 10 starters in the 2024 All-Star Game. Twenty-six NBA teams (sorry, Knicks, Cavs, Pistons, and Jazz fans) will feature at least one current player representing them in the Olympics.

The 1992 Dream Team, by comparison, faced only nine NBA players on its path to gold. But the tougher road the U.S. team faces today is a product of that star-studded Olympic tour and the vision of former NBA commissioner David Stern, who knew that the only person better than Santa Claus at transmitting joy in red and white was Michael Jordan. The world fell in love with basketball after that summer. Eventually, it came at the Americans’ expense. Team USA’s stunning exit in Athens in 2004 spawned the Redeem Team. And after a watered-down U.S. roster failed to medal at the 2023 FIBA World Cup, the alarm bells jingled again. The B team wouldn’t cut it anymore on the international stage. That Team USA even felt compelled to unite the Avengers to compete in Paris is a feather in the cap of the Dream Team’s legacy.

Since ’92, the NBA and the international scene have become intermingled. There was a time when basketball eggheads like Mike D’Antoni got ahead in the NBA by importing the ideas they learned across the Atlantic. But today, the NBA and international games have never looked so similar. The FIBA rules are slightly different, of course. The court is smaller. The international 3-point line is over a foot and a half closer than in the NBA. The second the ball touches the rim, it can be rebounded. Despite that, the Olympics have never felt less foreign. For an NBA fan, there is always a familiar reference point or player. It makes me cynical sometimes. Is the end point of all evolution a stylistic flattening? Is basketball the new hipster coffee shop? And then Nikola Jokic stupefies me with a passing angle I’ve never seen before, off a sequence I’ve never seen before.

With the action officially tipping off Saturday, here are six questions for NBA fans to watch for during the Olympics. It’s time to learn French, buddy.

Is Victor Wembanyama real?

While the Eiffel Tower, in its early days, was criticized by French intellectuals, no such disapproval has followed its progeny, Victor Wembanyama, the 7-foot-4 hometown hero poised to be the shiniest—and tallest—attraction in Paris. Australia fully conceded the opening tip to France in their exhibition earlier this week, giving up on the exercise in futility that is trying to win a 50-50 ball against Wemby, who has been everywhere all at once in the friendlies.

Within the smaller parameters of the FIBA court, Wembanyama looks even more rangy and imposing. He’s the only player I’ve ever seen who has to consistently shorten his strides in transition to drive and avoid bumping into other players—including Rudy Gobert, his own teammate. All eyes will be on the playability of the duo of 7-footers, who have stifled teams on defense but looked clunky at times on offense. Luckily for France, Wembanyama has the coordination to traverse tight windows, and his gangliness has not impeded his fearlessness and fluidity.

What sticks out the most in his development is the ease with which he is moving around the court. His handle has gotten tighter. His dribble, already low to the ground thanks to his wingspan, is closer to his hip pocket, where the ball is safe from the hands of encroaching defenders. And he looks stronger, completely unbothered when Dillon Brooks tried to throw him off his base, unfurling lefty turnaround fadeaway bankers off the dribble against bigs.

At times, his dominance has looked downright casual. His dunks are more feathery than forceful. He nails 30-footers without getting half a foot off the ground. He redirects lobs with the aplomb of air traffic control. He windmill passes lobs to Gobert from the 3-point line. It’s even scarier when you remember it isn’t performative nonchalance. He really is this calm because it really is this easy.

What can Joel Embiid learn from his summer of struggle?

To the delight of many NBA fans, the international stage hasn’t been friendly to Embiid this summer. Playing on a stacked Olympic team that prizes movement takes away what accentuates his greatness (his iso game, the rhythm that comes with constantly touching the ball) and forces him to exist in a context where he isn’t at the center of an offense’s solar system. When the ball comes to him, he often looks like the rusting gear in a well-oiled machine, impeding the action. On defense, he’s the big that opposing guards target the most and the only one playing in a drop scheme instead of switching. His suffering, he knows, creates joy. “I’m probably the most hated guy in the league,” he told the Check Ball podcast in an episode released earlier this week. “I don’t know why.”

Others do know why. Knicks fans will point to the tape of Embiid (who’s standing there like we’re-all-trying-to-find-the-guy-who-did-this) grabbing at Mitchell Robinson’s knees, the crown jewel in a collection of unethical swipes and a scoring bag that relies too much on unethical basketball. The FIBA refs aren’t prone to rewarding foul baiting, and there isn’t an aesthete in the world who won’t smile when Embiid falls to the floor and doesn’t get a whistle.

And to an extent, he can’t win right now. The troubling aftereffects of France’s colonial history in Cameroon, which he discussed in his interview with The New York Times, are a more than justifiable reason for him to opt not to play for the national team. But that argument won’t necessarily play well in Paris, where he was heckled upon his arrival. (By the way, it’s really hard to have a conversation with David Marchese and come away with a reduced Q score.)

But the on-court headline—his belief that he could have been the best player of all time if not for injuries—struck the same chord as his laments, on the Check Ball podcast, about the lack of superstar talent he’s had around him in comparison to Jayson Tatum, saying, “If I go 5-for-20, we get blown out.”

In both instances, Embiid offers up explanations that lack an awareness of the role he has played in creating the heavy, self-destructive burden he carries on the court. He has spent his prime in the upper rung of the usage ladder, despite playing alongside perimeter ball handlers like Tyrese Maxey, James Harden, Ben Simmons, and Jimmy Butler. He has eschewed defense for offense and played through injuries in regular-season games he should have sat out in a quest to win MVP.

He has also dealt with truly heartbreaking injury timing and improved his playmaking through the years, turning himself into a genuinely elite passer last year while recommitting himself to defense. These glimmers of self-awareness, evident through exhibition play, will be the key to his salvation—in the NBA and on the Olympic stage.

Playing in Steve Kerr’s offense is an opportunity for evolution for a player whose style of play has always felt a smidge too slow for deep playoff basketball. In recent years, teams with quick decision-makers (Jokic, Steph Curry, Draymond Green) and multiple protagonists (the Celtics and Bucks) have thrived while Embiid has struggled, but the Sixers star also made incremental improvements, sprinting around in the half court and driving to the rim with a vigor that didn’t exist when he played with Harden. His defense against perimeter players has improved, and his passes out of the post have progressively gotten quicker and sharper. He still looks clunky and likely will throughout the Olympics, but improvement rarely looks pretty. An earnest effort could be just what his reputation needs and could give him the perfect stepping stone to a training camp that will be about integrating Paul George into the fold.

Can someone give Carlik Jones a training camp invite?

One of the most uncanny things about international basketball is the way different rules and different settings can turn role players into stars. This is the land of Dennis Schroder MVP chants (and trophies). Patty Mills, divorced from the plodding work of an NBA backup, can give any country a 40-piece with quick-release pull-ups.

And another small, quick scoring guard, Carlik Jones, nearly led South Sudan to an upset against Team USA in exhibition play last week, putting up a triple-double against the likes of Derrick White and Jrue Holiday. Regardless of the stakes, that’s nothing to sniff at.

Jones, 6-foot-nothing, went undrafted in 2021 and was cut from the Chicago Bulls after the 2022-23 season despite winning G League MVP. Small guards have fallen out of vogue in recent years, but the craftier ones can still carve out roles by turning their perceived height disadvantage into a specialized mismatch problem in a league that’s increasingly obsessed with switching on defense.

Jones, like Jalen Brunson and Fred VanVleet, can counterbalance his size with strength, keeping his dribble alive and making incremental forays downhill by way of multiple bumps. Perhaps he could use their development as a guide—if not for stardom, then for survival.

Sometimes, these kinds of runs can exist only in the context of Olympic basketball, unburdened by the limits and responsibilities of playing a role in the NBA. Take, for example, Rudy Fernández. Other times, these experiences can unlock something dormant within a player that carries over to the NBA, like they did for Lauri Markkanen. Either way, performances like the ones Jones had against the U.S. force us to stretch our basketball imaginations.

Did South Sudan create the blueprint to beat Team USA?

South Sudan came within a point of upsetting the U.S. in exhibition play behind a game plan that attacked switches, penetrated the paint, and used off-ball movement to create 33 3-point attempts in 40 minutes. On defense, they leveraged their length and quickness to shrink the floor.

Was it a fluke? Or a formula that a more talented team could use to upset the heavily favored U.S.? Canada, which has Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who led the NBA in drives, flanked by the likes of Jamal Murray, Andrew Nembhard, and Dillon Brooks, certainly has the downhill perimeter firepower and the shooters. Can France, whose perimeter offense leaves a lot to be desired, catch fire from beyond the arc, while Wembanyama and Gobert put back their misses in a context where goaltending goes out the window once the ball touches the rim? If the Germans, whose constant slipping, lifting, and screening created problems for Team USA, had hit a few more of their 3s in exhibition play, they likely would have come away with a victory.

Can Canada overcome its size deficit?

Brooks, who was booed in Canada’s exhibition game against France, may need to live up to his billing as an international supervillain if Canada wants to steal gold in Paris. Without Zach Edey, the Canadian front line is thin, and it’ll take sizing up and gang rebounding from the likes of brawny perimeter guys like Brooks and Lu Dort to make up the difference.

Lucky for the Canadians, the “group of death” they’ve been placed into feels a lot more imposing on paper than on the court. Spain plays with zip, but they don’t have the talent they used to. Australia’s frontcourt might be even less physically imposing than Canada’s. I’m more worried about Greece, despite its dearth of NBA talent outside of Giannis Antetokounmpo, because playing alongside Georgios Papagiannis puts the Greek Freak in a five-out context with no easy help-side options.

That said, while the Canadians can’t match up with the Americans talent-wise or confuse them with an unfamiliar style, their talent and ability to stretch the floor with Kelly Olynyk and Trey Lyles should lead them to their first medal, if not gold, since 1936.

Will the Joker pull out some new tricks?

There was a time when basketball purists prayed at the altar of Sergio Scariolo and the Spanish national team. But in light of the Gasol brothers’ retirement, Serbia might be the greatest purveyors of basketball poetry at the Olympics.

NBA sets have become increasingly intricate, but the actions of high-level international offenses are just a little sharper, faster, more synchronized, and more intuitive. And in Serbia’s case, it helps to have the greatest passer in the world at the helm.

Check out this sequence against Japan, in which Bogdan Bogdanovic prescreens to grease the wheels of a dribble handoff, curls into the paint to set the second screen in a Spain pick-and-roll, and then fans out to the 3-point line.

Or this one, where he and Jokic turn a pick-and-roll into a give-and-go.

It’s not basketball as jazz as much as it’s basketball as Serbian folk pop, but it’s just as rhythmic. And, luckily, the music begins soon. Team USA will open its group stage play against Jokic and Serbia on Sunday.