Curated playlist
Olympic gold medalists for the United States in basketball
- Kevin DurantKevin Durant was born on the 29th of September 1988 in Washington, D.C., and grew up dreaming of one day playing for his favorite team, the Toronto Raptors, and his favorite player, Vince Carter. Few childhood sports fantasies have…
- Dwyane WadeDwyane Wade grew up on the South Side of Chicago, where he described his early childhood as "trying." His mother, JoLinda, struggled with drug addiction and cycled in and out of prison. When Wade was eight years old, his older sister…
- LeBron JamesLeBron Raymonde James Sr. was born on the 30th of December 1984, at Cleveland Clinic Akron General, to a 16-year-old mother named Gloria Marie James. His father was not involved in his life. The family moved through the run-down…
- Clyde DrexlerClyde Austin Drexler Sr. was born on the 22nd of June, 1962, in New Orleans, Louisiana, and by the time his professional basketball career ended, he had become one of only three players in history to accumulate 20,000 points, 6,000…
- Kobe BryantKobe Bean Bryant scored 81 points on the 22nd of January, 2006, the second-highest total in a single NBA game in the history of the sport. He did it wearing number 8 for the Los Angeles Lakers, against the Toronto Raptors, in a 122-104…
- Jerry WestJerry West died in Los Angeles on the 12th of June, 2024, at the age of 86. That same night, before game 3 of the NBA Finals between the Celtics and the Dallas Mavericks, the league held a moment of silence in his honor. It was a fitting…
- Karl MaloneKarl Anthony Malone grew up on a farm in Summerfield, Louisiana, the youngest of nine children raised by a single mother named Shirley. He chopped trees, hunted, and fished as a boy. He would go on to score 36,928 career points in the NBA,…
- Stephen CurryStephen Curry was born on the 14th of March, 1988, at Akron General Medical Center in Ohio, and grew up shooting baskets on a backyard court in Charlotte with his younger brother Seth. Nobody could have predicted that the slender kid who…
- Joel EmbiidJoel Embiid scored 70 points on the 22nd of January 2024, breaking a franchise record that had stood since Wilt Chamberlain set it in 1967. He did it in a regular-season game against the San Antonio Spurs, finishing with 70 points, 18…
- Larry BirdLarry Bird walked into the locker room at the inaugural Three-Point Shootout during the 1986 NBA All-Star Weekend and asked who was going to finish second. Then he won the contest. That moment captures something essential about him: the…
- Patrick EwingPatrick Aloysius Ewing Sr. was born on the 5th of August, 1962, in Kingston, Jamaica, one day before his home country declared independence. He would go on to become one of the most recognizable and dominant big men in the history of…
- Hakeem OlajuwonHakeem Abdul Olajuwon did not pick up a basketball until the age of 15. He was a soccer goalkeeper in Lagos, Nigeria, a city he would later describe as "very cosmopolitan" with "all different types of people." His first real exposure to…
- Bill RussellBill Russell won eleven NBA championships in thirteen seasons, a record in North American professional sports that no team has matched since. He won his first title in 1957 and his last in 1969, bookending a run so dominant that his…
- Kevin LoveKevin Love's uncle is Mike Love, a co-founder of the Beach Boys. His cousins Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, and Dennis Wilson were also founding members of the same group. Love was born on the 7th of September 1988, in Santa Monica,…
- Michael JordanMichael Jeffrey Jordan was born on the 17th of February 1963, in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, and before he was done, he would hold every scoring record that mattered in professional basketball. But the numbers alone miss the…
- Charles BarkleyCharles Wade Barkley was born on the 20th of February 1963 in Leeds, Alabama, a small town 17 miles east of Birmingham. He was the first Black baby born at what had been a segregated, all-white hospital. He would go on to become one of the…
- Scottie PippenScottie Pippen grew up in Hamburg, Arkansas, the youngest of twelve children, and was not offered a single college scholarship out of high school. He walked on to the University of Central Arkansas, a school competing in the NAIA rather…
- Magic JohnsonMagic Johnson stood at the free throw line on the 7th of November 1991 and told the world he had HIV. He was 32 years old, five-time NBA champion, and arguably the most beloved athlete in America. The announcement rippled through every…
- Shaquille O'NealShaquille Rashaun O'Neal was born on the 6th of March, 1972, in Newark, New Jersey, to a mother named Lucille and a biological father, Joe Toney, who would vanish from his life before it had barely begun. Toney was imprisoned for drug…
- Chris BoshChris Bosh once stood at center court in Toronto's Air Canada Centre as fans broke into a chant usually reserved for the league's biggest stars: 'MVP'. It happened on the 7th of February 2007, after Bosh scored a career-high 41 points at…
- Klay ThompsonKlay Alexander Thompson was born on the 8th of February 1990, the son of Mychal Thompson, the first overall pick of the 1978 NBA draft. That lineage would shape everything about who Klay became. But it didn't guarantee anything. What Klay…
- Kyrie IrvingKyrie Andrew Irving was born on the 23rd of March 1992 in Melbourne, Australia, the son of two American expatriates who had followed basketball to the other side of the world. His father, Drederick Irving, had played college ball at Boston…
- John StocktonJohn Stockton walked off the court for the last time on the 2nd of May 2003, not at a press conference surrounded by cameras and microphones, but through a quiet written statement released to the public. No fanfare. No podium. Just words…
- Christian LaettnerChristian Laettner topped an ESPN fan poll as the most hated college basketball player in history. That vote came more than twenty years after he left Duke University. By then he already held a spot in multiple halls of fame and a…