Kieran Shannon: Basketball deserves its Olympic stage... as world gains ground on USA's best
HOOP DREAMS: Lebron James, Stephen Curry and Devin Booker. Pic: John Walton/PA Wire.
If some people had their way you would have had no Timmy McCarthy, no Steph Curry and no basketball at all at the Paris Olympics.
In the justified scepticism of golf and tennis being individual events at the Olympics, there can be a tendency to lump hoops into the same bracket because the year-round visibility, star power and earning power of a Curry and LeBron James is equal at the least to that of a Djokovic, Scheffler and McIlroy. That there’s something contrived and artificial about them and their sports being accommodated in the same window and village as rowers, gymnasts, swimmers, track and field athletes. Such minority sports only get two weeks every four years to have their moment in the sun; why then should some of that light be blocked out by sports and names that get to bask in it the other 200-plus weeks of an Olympic cycle?
