Who Should Win USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year?
The finalists for the USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year have been announced, with five of the top performers earning the potential honors. With a thrilling summer of USA basketball, the players include young standouts and some of the best players in the world who showed out in the Olympics. From the Olympic gold medal roster, Stephen Curry, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant are the top nominees. For the blossoming talent, Mikel Brown Jr. led the FIBA U18 team to a gold medal, while AJ Dybantsa was the star of the FIBA U17 gold medal squad.
Each player makes a serious case to come away with the honors. Starting with the young stars, Dybantsa is the top recruit of the 2025 class and led a dominant U17 squad to the highest point differential in USA history. Brown Jr. was the key catalyst for the U18 roster, averaging over 10 points per game and five assists in just 25 minutes. Although these two rising stars shined, there’s a different level to do it in the Olympics on a global stage.
That brings it to Team USA’s best players and three of the biggest names of this basketball generation. Durant did his thing and became the all-time Team USA leader in scoring, as well as gaining the most gold medals in Olympic basketball history. James, the all-time NBA scoring leader, was phenomenal, doing the impossible of impacting the game in every facet at age 39. James picked up his second Olympic triple-double and just the fourth in history during the gold medal run, solidifying dominance as the focal point of the team.
Even though these two greats teamed up and played incredibly for what could be their last Olympic appearances, the honors belong to Curry. In his first Olympics, Curry stepped up as the saving grace for Team USA. He finished with a team-high 14.8 points per game, with a monster performance in the Semifinal against Serbia, notching 36 points in a comeback win. The magic continued in the gold medal game against the host country, France, scoring 24 points and going on one of the most outrageous late-game surges to seal the win in the final. The bottom line is, without Curry, there would have been no gold medal. The future Hall of Famer added the last accomplishment to his trophy case in his first-ever Olympics, playing some of the best basketball of his career on the world’s biggest stage to win it all. There is no question that Curry was the best male basketball player on the planet for Team USA.
