Over the next two weeks, the Olympic Village in Paris’ suburbs will house more than 14,000 athletes—but LeBron James won’t be one of them. Neither will Stephen Curry, Breanna Stewart or any of the other men’s and women’s basketball players representing Team USA at the Paris Games.
It’s not just because this year’s cardboard bedscan’t fit Joel Embiid’s 7-foot frame, or because the team has been concerned about the battle over air conditioning in France’s summer heat. USA Basketball has simply opted to make its own arrangements since 1992, when the NBA first allowed its players to participate in the Olympics and the Dream Team dominated the competition in Barcelona.
In most years, USA Basketball, the sport’s national governing body, has placed its athletes in luxury hotels outside the Olympic ecosystem, as it did at the Tokyo Summer Games in 2021, although the players’ accommodations at two previous Olympics, in Athens in 2004 and in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, were a bit more exotic, aboard docked cruise ships. But regardless of where exactly they stay—this year’s lucky hotel is being kept secret—putting up two dozen star players plus team staff and family members in roughly 700 rooms is never easy, nor is it cheap.
