Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (30) shoots between New Orleans Pelicans guards Jose Alvarado, left, and Dyson Daniels during the first half of an NBA basketball game Friday in San Francisco. (Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP Photo)

USA Basketball studied every men’s basketball game it has played for about two decades and a clear trend eventually appeared. When the defense isn’t good enough, the Americans tend to get themselves into trouble.

And the team for the Paris Olympics was built with that in mind.

LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Bam Adebayo, Devin Booker, Joel Embiid, Jayson Tatum, Anthony Davis, Jrue Holiday, Tyrese Haliburton, Anthony Edwards and Kawhi Leonard were formally announced as members of the U.S. Olympic team on Wednesday — a group with nearly 200,000 NBA points, 84 All-Star Game selections and 10 Olympic gold medals between them.

“You want obviously talented individuals, but you want players who can blend and can fit and can play certain roles that you need,” USA Basketball managing director Grant Hill said Wednesday. “But I think defense was certainly a priority and having guys that were capable of locking down, guarding multiple sets within a possession.”

The thinking is simple: Scoring shouldn’t be a problem, and if the defense does its job, the Americans — looking for a fifth consecutive Olympic gold medal — will be tough to beat.

The group has seven players with gold medals; Durant has three, James has two, while Adebayo, Booker, Holiday, Tatum and Booker each have one. Combined, the 12 players had averages of 24.2 points, 7.0 rebounds and 5.6 assists this season, shooting 39% from 3-point range.

“Obviously, it’s a great honor to represent your country,” Adebayo said. “But for me, to be in that room as part of those 12 players, part of who they think are the 12 best players to represent the United States, it takes it to a different level.”

The amount of talent on the U.S. roster is staggering. Of the 12 selections, seven finished the season ranked among the NBA’s top 15 scorers per game. James is the league’s all-time scoring leader, Curry the all-time leader in 3-pointers, Haliburton won the assist-per-game title this season and 10 were All-Stars this season as well.

“The goal is to win the gold,” Hill said. “They know that.”

The timing of Wednesday’s announcement coincided with the U.S. Olympic summit in New York and the window where the Americans were celebrating the start of a 100-day countdown to the opening ceremony in Paris. USA Basketball could have waited longer to announce but saw no point.

“There will be a lot of interest and a lot of people who will want to be along for this incredible journey we’re about to be on,” Hill said. “So, if we know, why wait?”

The Americans remain ranked No. 1 in the world by FIBA even after failing to medal in the two most recent World Cups — finishing seventh at China in 2019 and fourth at Manila last summer.

They won gold at the Tokyo Games by topping France 87-82. A slew of other nations will expect to contend for gold in Paris — the host French, reigning World Cup champion Germany, Serbia and Canada among them — but the American roster has a depth of NBA stars that no other country can reach.

“Your hope is that they haven’t played together before,” Canada’s Kelly Olynyk said when told this weekend of the U.S. roster, “other than the 12 last All-Star games.”

Hill led the task of assembling the roster, a process that took about 18 months, and the plan all along was to put together the team well in advance of training camp starting at Las Vegas in early July. Players were given their jerseys in visits by Hill or other USA Basketball officials in recent days, or in some cases got them at practice with their team.

“The common theme, when we’ve lost, was our defense wasn’t good enough,” U.S. coach Steve Kerr said. “That doesn’t sound like anything earth-shattering. We feel like we are going to score points. We’re going to have a lot of talent and we’re going to find a way to score. But the international game is more physical and we’ve addressed that.”

Durant has said since last year that he plans to play, which means he will pursue becoming the first men’s player in Olympic history with four basketball gold medals. He and Carmelo Anthony are the only men’s players with three Olympic golds; there are six women, all American, with at least four Olympic basketball golds. Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi each have five, while Teresa Edwards, Tamika Catchings, Sylvia Fowles and Lisa Leslie each won four.

James will seek a fourth medal, after winning bronze in 2004 and golds in 2008 and 2012. The other past gold medalists on the roster are Davis (2012), Adebayo (2020), Booker (2020), Tatum (2020) and Holiday (2020). The 2020 gold medals were won in 2021, since the COVID-19 pandemic forced a one-year delay of the Tokyo Games.

Curry will play in the Olympics for the first time, as will Leonard and Embiid — who chose to play for the U.S. last year after becoming an American citizen. The Cameroon-born center also could have chosen to represent France at the Paris Games.

The other first-time Olympians on the current roster are Haliburton and Edwards, both of whom played for the U.S. team that finished fourth at the World Cup in Manila last year.

“I definitely wanted this experience,” Curry said. “I think the timing is just right.”

There were more than 40 players under consideration for this team. Getting the roster to 12 was far from easy.

“I think everybody understands that these Olympics are going to be maybe the most anticipated, given that it’s Paris, in terms of players wanting to go, players’ wives wanting to go, everybody wanting to go,” Kerr said. “It made for some really difficult decisions for us, for sure.”

Durant and Curry said in October that they wanted to play this summer, Adebayo said then that he had already committed to the team, and it’s been assumed for some time that if players like James want to play, then all they have to do is say so.

The U.S. men have competed in basketball at the Olympics 19 times, winning 19 medals — 16 gold, one silver and two bronze.

The Paris team will be coached by Kerr, assisted by Erik Spoelstra, Tyronn Lue and Mark Few. It’s still possible that the roster changes before the summer, if injuries or deep runs in the NBA playoffs force players to change their minds about committing to the national team.

“We have a contingency plan,” Hill said, “and we have that at every position.”

NBA bans Jontay Porter

after gambling probe

Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter was banned for life from the NBA on Wednesday after a league probe found he disclosed confidential information to sports bettors and wagered on games, even betting on the Raptors to lose.

Porter is the second person to be banned by Commissioner Adam Silver for violating league rules. The other was now-former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling in 2014, shortly after Silver took office.

In making the announcement, Silver called Porter’s actions “blatant.”

“There is nothing more important than protecting the integrity of NBA competition for our fans, our teams and everyone associated with our sport, which is why Jontay Porter’s blatant violations of our gaming rules are being met with the most severe punishment,” Silver said.

The investigation started once the league learned from “licensed sports betting operators and an organization that monitors legal betting markets” about unusual gambling patterns surrounding Porter’s performance in a game on March 20 against Sacramento. The league determined that Porter gave a bettor information about his own health status prior that game and said that another individual — known to be an NBA bettor — placed an $80,000 bet that Porter would not hit the numbers set for him in parlays through an online sports book. That bet would have won $1.1 million.

Porter took himself out of that game after less than three minutes, claiming illness, none of his stats meeting the totals set in the parlay. The $80,000 bet was frozen and not paid out, the league said, and the NBA started an investigation not long afterward.

“You don’t want this for the kid, you don’t want this for our team and we don’t want this for our league, that’s for sure,” Raptors President Masai Ujiri said Wednesday in Toronto, speaking shortly before the NBA announced Porter’s ban. “My first reaction is obviously surprise, because none of us, I don’t think anybody, saw this coming.”

Later, after the NBA revealed the ban, the Raptors said they are “fully supportive of the league’s decision to ban Jontay Porter from the NBA and are grateful for the swift resolution to this investigation. We will continue to cooperate with all ongoing inquiries.”

The league has partnerships and other relationships with more than two dozen gaming companies, many of whom advertise during NBA games in a variety of ways. Silver himself has been a longtime proponent of legal sports wagering, but the league has very strict rules for players and employees regarding betting.

And what Porter was found to have done was in violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, which states: “Any Player who, directly or indirectly, wagers money or anything of value on any game or event in the Association or in the NBA G League shall, on being charged with such wagering, be given an opportunity to answer such charges after due notice, and the decision of the Commissioner shall be final, binding, and conclusive and unappealable.”

Silver cautioned last week that this move was possible, saying what Porter was accused of represented “cardinal sin” in the NBA. Porter has not commented since the investigation began, and never played for the Raptors again — he was listed as out for all of Toronto’s games for the remainder of the season citing personal reasons.

The league also determined that Porter — the brother of Denver Nuggets forward Michael Porter Jr. — placed at least 13 bets on NBA games using someone else’s betting account. The bets ranged from $15 to $22,000; the total wagered was $54,094 and generated a payout of $76,059, or net winnings of $21,965.

Those wagers did not involve any game in which Porter played, the NBA said. But three of the wagers were multi-game parlays, including a bet where Porter — who was not playing in the games involved — wagered on the Raptors to lose. All three of those bets lost.

“While legal sports betting creates transparency that helps identify suspicious or abnormal activity, this matter also raises important issues about the sufficiency of the regulatory framework currently in place, including the types of bets offered on our games and players,” Silver said. “Working closely with all relevant stakeholders across the industry, we will continue to work diligently to safeguard our league and game.”

Porter was on what is called a two-way contract, meaning he could play for both the Raptors and their affiliate in the G League. His salary for this year was around $410,000; had the Raptors signed him to a standard NBA contract next season, as seemed possible, his salary would have exceeded $2 million.

The 24-year-old Porter averaged 4.4 points, 3.2 rebounds and 2.3 assists in 26 games, including five starts. He also played in 11 games for Memphis in the 2020-21 season.

ESPN first reported the investigation, which it said surrounded Porter’s performance in games on Jan. 26 and March 20. In both games, Porter played briefly before leaving citing injury or illness. Porter played 4 minutes, 24 seconds against the Los Angeles Clippers in the first of those games, then 2:43 against Sacramento in the second game.

In both of those games, Porter did not come close to hitting the prop-wager lines for points, rebounds and 3-pointers that bettors could play at some sportsbooks. For example, one set of prop wagers for Porter for the Clippers game was set at 5.5 points, 4.5 rebounds and 1.5 assists; he finished with no points, three rebounds and one assist. For the Kings game, they were around 7.5 points and 5.5 rebounds; Porter finished that game with no points and two rebounds.

The league said its probe “remains open and may result in further findings,” and that those findings are being shared with federal prosecutors.