The Paris Olympic Village is the size of 70 football pitches, cost around €2billion (£1.7billion) to build, and is housing 14,000 athletes.
Located in the north of Paris, straddling Saint-Denis, Saint Ouen and L’lle-Saint-Denis on the River Seine, the Olympic Village is supposed to have best in class facilities for its best in class guests.
Athletes will stay in apartment complexes just outside ParisCredit: AFP
Despite its exorbitant construction cost, several horror stories about the Olympic Village’s underwhelming amenities have already emerged online.
Team USA flag-bearer Coco Gauff was one of the first athletes to highlight the sub-standard conditions, revealing that the mediocre living arrangements forced her and her team to leave the Village and stay in hotels instead.
Other gripes have included rock-hard cardboard beds, lack of air conditioning and privacy, and average food – surely a crime in the culinary capital of the world.
However, one group of athletes who can’t complain about the Olympic Village is Team USA’s men’s and women’s basketball teams – because they aren’t staying in it.
Instead, the likes of LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Breanna Stewart, and A’ja Wilson, as well as team staff and family members, are reportedly staying in around 800 different rooms inside a secret luxury hotel somewhere in Paris.
It’s a precedent that dates back to the 1992 Olympics, when Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson’s ‘Dream Team’ rocked up to Barcelona, Spain and passed on staying at the Olympic Village where athletes typically reside.
The Beatlemania esque fanfare that swarmed the Dream Team got so intense that it forced the NBA All-Stars to find a base at the Ambassador Hotel, just off the city’s main street, Las Ramblas.
“It was too hard to go out. You were mobbed,” Kim Bohuny, NBA manager of international events, reportedly said.
It’s a trend that has continued throughout the years, including at Athens in 2004 and Rio in 2016 when Team USA basketball stayed in luxury cruise ships, none of which comes cheap.
The 1992 Dream Team did not stay in the Barcelona Olympic VillageCredit: Getty
LeBron James, Kevin Durant and co have followed suitCredit: AP
The women’s basketball team are also staying in the secret Parisian hotelCredit: Getty
According to Forbes, it costs most American teams at the 2024 Games — whether it be fencing, weightlifting, or any of the other myriad Olympics events the powerhouse sporting nation competes in — between $300,000-$400,000 to send, lodge, transport and provide security to their athletes.
By comparison, the outlet estimates that it has cost $15 million to send the American basketball squads to the Olympics, due to their very different needs around security, scheduling, nutrition, the shipping of specific equipment and visits from family members.
Fortunately for the NBA/WNBA superstars and their staff and family members, Team USA Basketball — a nonprofit organization — can more than afford the outlay.
Having reportedly generated nearly $80 million over the past four years, half of which has come from its licensing and marketing agreement with the NBA, some upmarket accommodation has not been a stretch on the budget.
Criticisms of Team USA Basketball’s preferential treatment to its stars may have been justified ahead of the 2024 Games.
But with the countless Paris Olympic Village complaints, Team USA will feel more than vindicated by its decision to host its players away from the usual Olympics residency.
It’s not as if the men’s and women’s basketball teams can’t wander around the Village and go to various events, either.
Anthony Edwards has been loving the table tennis, LeBron was at the 3×3 basketball and beach volleyball with his family, and Durant, Steph Curry, Jrue Holiday, Devin Booker and Tyrese Halburton were in attendance at the Bercy Arena to watch Simone Biles claim gold in the women’s individual all-around final.
Ant-Man has been loving the table tennisCredit: x@clutchpoints
Both the mens’ and women’s teams are unbeaten in 2024 Olympics play.
The men — with a staggering $2.5 billion in NBA earnings, seven times more than their group stage opponents — are sitting pretty in Group C after resounding wins over Serbia and South Sudan, while the women are also 2-0 after victories against Japan and Belgium.
Both squads are overwhelming favorites to win gold in the City of Lights this summer.
The USA Basketball Men’s National Team have won medals in all nineteen Olympic tournaments it has entered, including sixteen golds. They are bidding for their fifth straight gold medal in the 2024 Summer Games.
Everything has gone to plan for the men’s team so far, but that hasn’t stopped fans criticizing head coach Steve Kerr’s lineups.
The Golden State man benched stars Jayson Tatum and Joel Embiid for entire games against Serbia and South Sudan respectively.
Embiid was dropped from the starting lineup and benched for the entirety of the USA’s game against South SudanCredit: Getty
He has also persisted with Curry in the starting lineup, despite the fact the Splash Brother has missed 22 of his last 29 3-pointers – a four-game slump that includes two exhibition games in London and his last two Olympics outings.
Meanwhile Durant, arguably Team USA’s best player in Paris, has been doing all of his scoring off the bench.
Kerr is continuing to ignore calls to simply start his best five players, and is sticking with what he believes gives the US the best chance of winning.
“For us it’s very obvious watching games that having guys in their usual roles is very helpful,” Kerr said ahead of Saturday’s group game against Puerto Rico.
“And so it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for us to put our five leading scorers on the floor from an NBA season because those guys don’t complement each other well. Just coaching basketball, it’s pretty simple for us, regardless of all the noise.”
Team USA women’s basketball, meanwhile, are eyeing their eighth consecutive Olympic gold medal, and have not lost a game at the Olympics since the semifinals of the 1992 tournament in Barcelona.
Stewart and Wilson have been the stars for Team USA so far.
Two-time WNBA Finals MVP Stewart finished with 26 points, seven rebounds and three blocks against Belgium, while two-time WNBA MVP Wilson notched her second double-double of the Games, adding 23 points and 13 rebounds.
USA will face Germany on Sunday in the final game of Group C with both teams already qualified for the knockout stage of the tournament.
