How the Olympic men’s quarter-finals became the best day in basketball

Major League Baseball games in London, Japan, South Korea and Cuba. The NFL international series, coming next month to a South American all-seater near you. Game 39. Professional sports organizations around the world have fallen over themselves in recent years trying to break into new markets and expand their spheres of influence. But all of these flailing efforts to satisfy growth-obsessed stakeholders have failed to even approach the simple genius of NBA commissioner David Stern, who laid down the gold standard for globalization more than three decades ago when he willed the Dream Team into existence for the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.

The US squad featuring Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Charles Barkley, arguably the greatest collection of sporting talent ever assembled, was more than just a great team. It was a sentient infomercial for a sport and a culture. Sports Illustrated writer Jack McCallum compared it to “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, the Allman Brothers at the Fillmore East, Santana at Woodstock”. The Americans’ eight-game romp to the gold medal by an average margin of 44 points was a seminal moment where suddenly kids around the globe were growing up wanting to be like Mike. It was the closest thing to a big bang that a sport has ever seen.

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Fast-forward to Tuesday when the business end of the Olympic men’s basketball tournament kicked off here in south-east Paris. Thirty-two years on from Barcelona, basketball has taken its place alongside hip-hop and jazz as America’s richest cultural exports. With all those kids long since grown and the international talent pool deeper than ever, the last eight of the Olympic knockout stage has become the best day basketball can offer: an all-day quadruple-header of win-or-go-home quarter-finals that winnows eight of the best teams on the planet down to four. The winners move within touching distance of a medal, the losers hit the bricks and the whole thing crackles with an energy that only national pride can engender.

It wasn’t always like this. Back in 1992, there weren’t more than a handful of truly good international sides to populate a compelling last eight, at least that could be competitive against the American juggernaut. The seven teams who reached the quarter-finals in Barcelona that didn’t have USA on their shirts featured a combined seven active NBA players across their rosters. That was a far cry from Tuesday, when anyone fortunate enough to be in the building for all four contests saw no fewer than 47 NBA players take the floor, among them six Most Valuable Players with a total of 13 trophies: LeBron James (four), Nikola Jokić (three), Stephen Curry (two), Giannis Antetokounmpo (two), Kevin Durant and Joel Embiid (one apiece).

Unlike the gymnastics sessions that took place in the same building over the past week, each of Tuesday’s four quarter-finals required a separate ticket, leaving the poor stewards to hustle the crowds to the doors within seconds of the final buzzer. That meant roughly 40,000 fans descended on this quiet suburban neighborhood in the 12th arrondissement, creating a festival-like atmosphere on the closed-down streets from morning till past dark.

Outside people draped themselves in flags and sucked down plastic cups of beer, while the cafes across the road filled with fans watching on television reacted to every basket. One of them, Brasserie Les Spectacles, had the sense to festoon their window heads with American flags and declare themselves the “official” USA fan zone. And the jerseys. So many jerseys: mainstream and obscure, contemporary and throwback, authentic and bootleg, from Michael Jordan to Michael Olowokandi to at least four varieties of Victor Wembanyama (Mets 92, Spurs, France home and away).

Inside the venue the quality of the games themselves ranged from good to great. After Germany eliminated Greece in the opener to reach the Olympic semi-finals for the first time, Serbia roared back from 24 points down to beat Australia in overtime and complete the biggest comeback in Olympic Games history. By the time France took the floor against a podium-minded Canada team stacked high with NBA talent, the 10,100-seat arena was a tinderbox waiting for a match. The hosts supplied it early by running out to an overwhelming early lead before holding off a late fightback, followed by a garbage-time Marseillaise and an umpteenth singalong to Freed from Desire. The Canadians’ 88-year medal drought continued.

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Wembanyama is a fascinating one. The 20-year-old with the 8ft wingspan came into the Olympics with the weight of the country on his shoulders – having been named the NBA’s rookie of the year and finishing second in defensive player of the year voting only to French teammate Rudy Gobert – but the pressure has been dialed down somewhat with the emergence of national sensations like Leon Marchand, Teddy Riner and even the Brothers Lebrun. It’s likely Wemby will still be the cornerstone of Les Bleus at the 2036 Doha Olympics, but a long-sought Olympic medal is suddenly 40 minutes away.

Of course there was no mistaking the night’s true headliners. The Americans never quite left second gear in running out to a double-digit lead against a badly overmatched Brazil side in the opening four minutes and never looked back. After the ear-splitting atmosphere of the game before it, the one-way traffic elicited more polite applause than white-knuckle fervor during the brief moments the drama lasted. For all the headway made by their international rivals in recent years, the United States are 141-5 overall in the Olympics, including 34-1 since their infamous 2004 flop in Athens. While their hottest rivals may have caught up to the talent in their starting five, it’s a second line of elite subs which figures to see them all the way to a fifth straight Olympic gold.

But the spirit of the night was summed up perfectly with Brazil trailing by more than 30 points and two minutes remaining, the once-teeming media tribunes long since vacated, when their green-clad supporters and the many French neutrals on their side broke out into a series of deafening football chants, defiant to the last before exiting into the sticky night. Four games down, four teams left and a day well spent.