LeBron James and Steph Curry had never played together on Team USA prior to this summer, but that drought ended when James gave Curry a call in the fall.
“He was the first person I talked to,” Curry said in recent days, according to ESPN. “‘Would this be something I would want to do?’ And from there it was like, ‘Let’s get it.’”
Curry played for Team USA at the FIBA World Cup in 2010 and 2014, but has never been to the Olympics.
“I’ve played with Team USA before on the world championship stage, but I don’t know what to expect when it comes to this challenge and this experience. And so I had the first-practice jitters.
“… Add the surrealness of who is on this team and all the battles that we’ve had over the course of our careers and the fact that we get to put that energy together as teammates. So I’m enjoying every minute of this.”
Curry added that he had the utmost respect for James despite having intense battles with him in the Finals over the years.
“It was like a healthy resentment of somebody that’s standing in your way,” Curry said of his playoff battles against James. “But through it all, there’s obviously the utmost respect for who he is as a person and player and like how good he is and the challenge of trying to beat him and trying to solve that problem every year.”
The two rivals-turned-teammates didn’t take long to create a memorable moment on the court when Team USA played Canada in their first Olympic warmup game on Wednesday, with Curry feeding James for an emphatic alley-oop.
Team USA will return to the court when they face Australia in Abu Dhabi on July 15.
