NBA star Steph Curry won a gold medal as a member of Team USA Men's Basketball at the 2024 Summer Olympics, completing a task the team was heavily favored to do ahead of the games.
Curry's performance has been praised by basketball analysts and broke the hearts of French fans.
What Happened: Curry had not competed in a Summer Olympics prior to 2024, something that came with the U.S. team struggling in recent international competitions.
The NBA star can now add a gold medal to his list of accomplishments alongside four NBA championships, two MVP awards, an NBA Finals MVP award and many records broken across the league.
In the gold medal game, USA defeated the basketball team of host country France with a score of 98-87.
The score was close for most of the game until a late performance by Curry that included four straight three-point shots made put the game out of reach. Curry hit a three-point shot with 35 seconds left to put USA up by nine points.
Following the shot, Curry celebrated with his trademark "night, night" celebration.
McDonald's France, which is a unit of McDonald's Corporation MCD, joked about a retaliation move due to Curry's gold medal game performance.
"For obvious reasons, we are considering removing this sauce," McDonald's France posted on Instagram alongside an image of curry sauce. The restaurant company captioned the post with "for 4 years minimum."
McDonald's has over 1,500 restaurants in France, which ranks the country first in Europe for the restaurant company. With over 40,000 restaurants globally, France represents between 3% and 4% of all restaurants.
Why It's Important: The gold medal game marked a second consecutive Summer Olympics with France losing men's basketball to Team USA for the gold medal. To make matters worse, France also lost the gold medal game in women's basketball to Team USA.
Curry had 24 points in the gold medal game, including making eight of 12 three-point shots attempted.
"I've seen that from Steph a few times, but it never gets old," Team USA head coach Steve Kerr told reporters, per the New York Post.
Kerr, who also coaches Curry on the NBA's Golden State Warriors, said the Olympics had a lot of great players, but Team USA had the greatest players.
"They were all so unselfish throughout this whole thing, through all the noise, all the pressure."
Curry led Team USA with an average of 14.8 points per game during the 2024 Summer Olympics. His two best performances came in the team's last two games.
The NBA star had 36 points in a semifinal game against Serbia, hitting nine of 14 three-point attempts.
Curry had less than 10 points in three of the team's six games and made no three-point shots in two of the Olympic games. A total of 17 of Curry's 22 made three-point shots came in the last two games.
To add insult to the gold medal loss for Team France, Curry was seen wearing a "nuit, nuit" hoodie after the game, which translates to "night, night" in French.
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