Team USA Can Win Without Steph Curry, But The Peak Dream Team Dream Is Over

Picture this: Stephen Curry, the best point guard and arguably best basketball player in the world, brings the ball up the floor. He crosses half-court and, about 30 feet from the rim, dribbles the ball around a screen set by his teammate Draymond Green, as he's done thousands of times before. The defense, refusing to let Curry pull up and shoot—they've seen that before, and know how it ends—instead moves to trap him in an effort to get the ball out of his hands.

And Curry obliges, sliding a pass through the defense to Green, who at this point has performed his familiar short roll to the area just above the free-throw line. Green catches and, when he turns to face the rim, finds himself navigating a four-on-three against the opposing defense. He drives the lane and draws help from the weak side corner, so he kicks the ball out to a waiting Klay Thompson.

A second help defender puts every ounce of his energy into running Thompson off the line, so Thompson feigns a shot and takes two hard dribbles into the paint. More help converges there, so he fires it across the court to … LeBron James. All five members of the defense are scrambling at this point, and two helpers fly at James simultaneously. He fakes a shot himself and powers his way toward the lane, drawing the attention of the opposition's rim-protector, the final line of defense. As soon as the man bites, James floats the ball up in the air for … Kevin Durant, who slams it through the rim and casually jogs back on defense.

As recently as a few days ago, the likelihood of being treated to this sort of sequence later this summer seemed highly probable. But with Curry's announcement on Monday that he is withdrawing his name from consideration to represent Team USA at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, that possibility is gone. Curry's reasons for withdrawing are, of course, completely legitimate—we all know about the various injuries he's suffered during this postseason, even if we don't know quite how much they're impacting him—but that doesn't make the decision any less disappointing for those of us who watch the Olympics at least in part to see Team USA elevate the game of basketball to a higher plane.

Playing on the Olympic team transforms players into something completely different than what they are with their NBA squads; that's the fun of it, much more than watching the wins pile up. The guys we are so used to seeing be one thing suddenly become something different away from the center of attention. By putting these superstars in the company of superstars, give or take the periodic Plumlee, Team USA frees them up to unlock elements of their skill set rarely put on display. Unsurprisingly, this results in some stunning stuff, but less in the pyrotechnic way than we're used to from these stars, and more in terms of seeing just how much they can do. It's thrilling to see the world's best basketball players happily find their roles amid all the star talent around them, in games that—unlike the outwardly similar All-Star Game—actually mean something, and are played full-out.

On Team USA, Russell Westbrook's full-court ferocity comes out not only in the relentless pace to which he pushes the offense, but also in the hounding defense we last saw him display consistently when he was at UCLA. Carmelo Anthony morphs from a ball-stopping isolation maestro into a 6-foot-8 Ray Allen with post moves. James, who is typically loathe to even play power forward during the NBA season, willingly steps in at center for a few minutes at a time, even while he's actually playing point guard. Even Kobe Bryant only took 18.2 shots per 36 minutes the last time he played with Team USA. Everything, and everyone, is different.

Though Curry was not on the 2012 squad that won Gold with an average margin of victory over 30 points a game, he was a roster lock this summer if he wanted to be in Rio. You don't win back-to-back MVPs and then get left off what Tom Ziller dubbed The Vaccine Team.

What's especially crushing about his absence, though, is that this was likely the last shot to see Curry play alongside the guys that brought Team USA back to prominence after a 2004 Athens Games debacle. The only remaining Redeem Team members still on the preliminary roster for 2016 were James, Anthony, and Chris Paul. CP3 already pulled out, but LeBron and Melo are still probable, and likely locks if they want to make the trip given how much the USA basketball program values experience and continuity. But Anthony is 32 years old and James is 31. This will be the fourth trip to the Olympics for each of them. By the time 2020 rolls around, it seems incredibly likely that they won't be headed to Tokyo; if they do, they'll no longer be their prime selves.

And so this was our last chance to see defenses spin themselves into the ground figuring out what to do when this earth-bending version of Apex Curry screened for this freight-train version of LeBron at the top of the key. This was our last chance to watch what Melo could do with all the space afforded to him when defenses sent two or three guys at Steph. It was also likely our last chance to see Steph play in a situation where he wasn't the roster's undisputed top dog. James is still at or near the top of his game, and on Team USA, he is still the guy around whom everything else orbits, even if he doesn't lead the team in shots. Watch that 2012 team—James was deep in the team concept, but still controlling every inch of the floor. Seeing how Curry fit in with that would have been fascinating.

And it's not just Curry who won't be in Rio. LaMarcus Aldridge, Blake Griffin, John Wall, and 2012 medal-winners Chris Paul and Anthony Davis won't be there, either. Westbrook is reportedly uncertain whether he'll attend and so is Andre Iguodala. Even James and Anthony haven't fully committed yet—LeBron floated the idea that he might sit out in deference to Kobe, and Melo has waffled in his various public statements.

The Americans will enter the tournament as heavy favorites whether those guys travel to Rio or not; their replacements on the roster will likely range from DeMarcus Cousins and Kawhi Leonard to Kyrie Irving and Damian Lillard, and that's a pretty solid set of fallback options. But if any or all of the players whose statuses are currently up in the air don't show, we won't be seeing Peak USA. We might never see it again, either, and that's a damn shame.