We ended up watching some Olympics stuff on television last week, surprisingly, and most of it came in the form of NBA and WNBA players thrilling the world on the basketball courts of Paris—much to the chagrin of the host nation, which took silvers in both the men’s and women’s competitions. Thus, this NBA Tuesday pays homage to the incredible fourth quarters in the gold-medal games of the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Well, we were wrong about a lot of things, especially the excitement of the men’s competition—although the women’s result was much more shocking, in truth. But more on that below: let’s start with the men and, specifically, Serbia, France, and Stephen Curry. We applaud the opponents who went down valiantly against Curry & Co. in the semifinals (Serbia) and the finals (France). They played excellent basketball.

Yet when the United States was down by 15 points with just 30-plus seconds left in the third quarter against Serbia, American Head Coach Steve Kerr did what he needed to do: load the floor with his NBA MVP quartet of Curry, Kevin Durant, Joel Embiid, and LeBron James. Team USA stormed back to outscore Serbia, 32-15, in the final 10 minutes, and Curry was huge (36 points on 12-for-19 shooting with 8 boards).

In fact, without Curry, the Americans never would have been as close as they were heading into the final quarter. Nonetheless, the MVP quartet—plus Devin Booker, a guy who has been an All Star four times in the last five seasons—did what they needed to against Nikola Jokić (probably the best player in the world right now) and his teammates. Just watch the highlight reel and try to remember to breathe through it.

The 95-91 victory merely set the stage for the final against France, a team with some serious NBA talent on its roster, too. It was close-fought contest, really, and Curry once again stepped up late, hitting four 3-point shots in the final two-plus minutes to stick the fork in the Parisian hopes for a major upset. This time, Curry scored 25 points on 8-for-13 shooting with 5 assists. His final trey was just stunning to see in real time.

NBC must have been in shock, too, as it took the network 17 minutes to show a replay of Curry nailing the high-arc rainbow shot over two defenders in his face with nary a second or two left on the shot clock. For the French in the crowd, it may have been numbing to watch, but for those in the United States who have watched Curry make buckets like this for more than a decade now, it was just another moment to smile.

If you’re scoring at home, Curry put up a combined 60 points in the last two games of the Olympic tournament on 20-for-32 shooting against the best players in the world. For Curry, this was well deserved as this was his only shot to win a gold medal, and he clearly wanted it. While many of the other guys on Team USA already had multiple golds, Curry looked like the joyous amateur with only one chance at it. Amen.

We loved that. Likewise, watching Team France go toe-to-toe with the American woman was incredible as well, since the United States was on a 60-game winning streak in women’s Olympic hoops; the last time the Americans lost was in the 1992 Games at Barcelona. In that 60-game win streak, only two teams had come within single digits of beating Team USA in the Olympics, and the French women fought hard to the end.

If you didn’t see this finish live, the replay can’t really do it justice: it was that close. The American women did not play poorly, but the home crowd really spurred on the French to a near upset that would have been the most monumental in Olympic basketball since the 1972 men’s final. To the announcers’ credit, they called it right away on the final shot, while at home, we weren’t really sure what had happened. Thrilling!

On that note, we will applaud, again, all the competitors, the American gold medalists, and the French crowds for providing some exciting stuff that we didn’t really think was still possible in this day and age of Olympic professionalism. Thank you all for the amazement you provided to this skeptical audience here. And on that note, NBA Tuesday will return next week with a brand-new miniseries that is sure to please … we hope.