PARIS – Joel Embiid recently suggested Team USA’s stars were old, and their advanced ages may cause outsiders to overrate their collective might.

Two of the players Embiid was talking about agree with him, to a point.

“Of course, we’re older and we all have mileage on our bodies,” said Kevin Durant, 35, who is Team USA’s all-time leading scorer but has yet to play this summer due to a calf injury. “We figure out ways to be effective, just as Jo has as he’s gone through injuries.”

Embiid, 30, has battled a host of injuries throughout his career, and chose playing for the U.S. over France — where he also gained citizenship — at the Olympics.

Durant acknowledged that he was aware of Embiid’s comments. Steph Curry, who sat next to Durant at an Olympic press conference in Paris on Thursday, suggested ignorance and asked for the context.

“What I’m saying is there’s too many podcasts out there,” said Curry, who is 36.

Embiid’s comments, told to New York Times Magazine in a 32-minute episode of “The Interview” before the start of Team USA’s training camp but published July 20, caused a stir outside of the American national team.

Team USA, winners of four consecutive golds and a prohibitive favorite for a fifth, is made up of 11 current NBA All-Stars who are considered future hall of famers. But Embiid’s point was that the team had been given too much credit before any games were played, and a reason why was that time had taken its toll on the elder stars.

“You look at the talent that the U.S. has, but there’s equal talent on other teams,” Embiid said. “And the talent that’s on the U.S. team, you also got to understand most of those guys are older. The LeBron now is not the LeBron that was a couple of years ago. So it’s a big difference. Everybody would also tell you, and you can see for yourself, the athletic LeBron, dominant that he was a couple of years ago, is not the same that he is now. I think people get fooled by the names on paper. But those names have been built throughout their career, and now they’re older. They’re not what they used to be.”

Embiid used James, 39, as the example, but the American team has seven players who are 30 or older. Derrick White is 30, Anthony Davis is 31 and Jrue Holiday is 34. Kawhi Leonard, 33, was on the team originally but sent home by USA executives because it was deemed his chronic knee swelling would not allow him to play at a high enough level during the Olympics. He was replaced by White.

The irony of Embiid singling out James, and the timing of publication, is that James has been Team USA’s top player through the exhibition season. He is leading the team in scoring and assists, and twice rescued the Americans from late deficits with 25 points against South Sudan (on July 20, the date Embiid’s interview was published, and 11 of his 20 points late in the fourth quarter Monday against Germany.

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James averages 14.6 points and 3.8 assists for Team USA. Neither James nor Embiid have addressed the comments publicly and Durant said they were not a topic of conversation inside the team.

“The thing about greatness is that you adjust and continue to find ways to be effective,” Durant added Thursday when asked about James. “That’s what LeBron has done. He’s not running and jumping the same way he was when he was 25, 26 years old, but he’s still jumping pretty high and running pretty fast.”

Curry said the team still relies on their younger members too.

“It’s a five-man team (on the court at one time), so you’ve got to put it all together,” he said.

Currently, Devin Booker starts for the U.S. alongside James, Curry, Embiid and Holiday. Booker is 27 but is already an Olympic gold medalist. Holiday won gold with Booker at the Tokyo games. The team’s second-leading scorer, Anthony Edwards, is 22 and plays on the second unit with Davis, Bam Adebayo (27), Jayson Tatum (26), and White. Tatum and Adebayo also won gold in 2021.

“I don’t really don’t think it’s a big deal,” USA coach Steve Kerr said later on Thursday, when he was asked about Embiid’s comments. “I think it’s a fact that LeBron’s 39, Steph is 36. It doesn’t change the fact that LeBron’s still a hell of a player. He took over the last two games.

“We really like the balance on this team of age and experience, and none of that stuff matters other than coming together as a team and bringing the collective competitive force to a higher level,” Kerr continued. “And we’re definitely capable of doing that.”

Team USA’s first game at the Olympics is against Serbia at 5:15pm local (11.15am ET) on Sunday, in Lille, France. Friday is an off day for the American team as it prepares for the audacious Opening Ceremony in Paris, in which athletes are to float on barges down the River Seine.

James will become the first U.S. men’s player ever to serve as flag bearer.

Required reading

(Top photo: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images)

Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw was hardly dominant in a 6-4 victory over the San Francisco Giants before a sun-baked crowd of 52,291 in Chavez Ravine on Thursday, his first game back from the November shoulder surgery that sidelined him for the first four months of the season.

In fact, the 36-year-old left-hander described a start in which he gave up two runs and six hits in four innings, striking out six and walking two, as just “OK.”

But it was more than OK for the Dodgers, who aren’t expecting the three-time National League Cy Young Award winner to regain his 2014 NL most-valuable-player form but need him to pitch well enough to shore up an injury-ravaged rotation as they push toward another division title.

“He’s probably not happy he gave up some runs, but I thought his stuff looked good,” catcher Austin Barnes said. “I thought he was able to move the ball around and keep hitters off-balance. His fastball had that jump on it, that life. He probably wasn’t happy with some of the fastball locations, but I think his whole mix was pretty good.”

Kershaw threw 72 pitches, 47 for strikes. His four-seam fastball averaged 90.6 mph and topped out at 91.8 mph. He used his 86.6-mph slider to finish four of his six strikeouts. He threw some good looping curves and even mixed in six changeups, a pitch he has struggled to command in the past. He induced 14 swinging strikes.

“I was looking at the stuff and the arm speed, the hand speed, and that’s something he maintained for all of his pitches,” Roberts said. “When he starts to lose that, the slider isn’t sharp, the curveball doesn’t get there, and there’s a loss of fastball velocity, but today, it held. For me, that was a big positive. It shows that he’s strong, he’s healthy.”

A 32-pitch third inning, in which Kershaw gave up two runs but struck out three straight batters with runners on first and second, prevented Kershaw from pitching the fifth, and six relievers — Joe Kelly, Daniel Hudson, Evan Phillips, Alex Vesia, Blake Treinen and Brent Honeywell — had to cover the final five innings.

But Kershaw gave the Dodgers a chance to win for the sixth time in seven games, which they did when Nick Ahmed, the veteran shortstop who was signed on Wednesday to replace the injured Miguel Rojas, and Shohei Ohtani hit back-to-back home runs off submarine-throwing right-hander Tyler Rogers to snap a 4-4 tie in the eighth.

Ahmed, who was released by the Giants on July 10, drove a 2-and-2 sinker 396 feet to center field for his second homer of the season.

“That was big — we needed it,” Roberts said. “To have essentially a Gold Glove shortstop fall in our lap, and we lose [utility man] Chris Taylor [to a left-groin strain] the same night we acquire him, and for him to hit the go-ahead homer against his old team … I’m sure that felt good for him.”

Ohtani then hit a first-pitch slider that left his bat at 112.6 mph with a launch angle of 46 degrees, producing a towering drive that seemed to hang in the air forever, his 31st homer of the season traveling only 360 feet, tied for the fourth-shortest of his career.

“I was just hoping it would stay fair,” Roberts said. “He hit like a sand wedge at 46 degrees and it went 20 rows deep. Look up the last time somebody hit a ball that far with a 46-degree launch angle. It just doesn’t happen. Those usually go 260 feet. So again, he never ceases to amaze.”

Shohei Ohtani rounds the bases after hitting a solo homer in the eighth inning to extend the Dodgers’ lead to 6-4.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Kiké Hernández paced a 14-hit Dodgers attack with an RBI single in the second inning, an RBI double in the fourth and a single in the fifth, Barnes had two hits, including an RBI single in the fourth, and Gavin Lux walked and scored in the second, doubled and scored in the fourth and singled in the fifth.

After taking the mound to his familiar entrance song — ”We are Young,” by Fun — Kershaw struck out Patrick Bailey with an 88-mph slider with two on to end the first inning.

He wobbled in the third, giving up a leadoff single to Jorge Soler, an RBI triple to Tyler Fitzgerald, an RBI single to Heliot Ramos and a single to Matt Chapman, the Giants taking a 2-1 lead. There were still two runners on with no outs, and the Giants were threatening to blow the game open, but Kershaw remained calm.

“He’s the same, honestly, from the start of the game to the end,” Barnes said, when asked if he saw the “old” Kershaw emerge in the jam. “I think that’s one of his better traits. He just doesn’t let off the gas. He’s the same guy. He keeps coming at you.”

Kershaw didn’t give in. He struck out Bailey with an 87-mph slider, David Villar looking at a 73-mph curve and Thairo Estrada with an 88-mph slider.

“He’s pitched in so much stress throughout his career, he just defaults to having already been there,” Roberts said. “So it’s not about your first start back. It’s not about how you feel. It’s getting an out, getting out of that inning, minimizing damage. People who have been in those kinds of battles have that to fall back on.”

Kershaw struck out Mike Yastrzemski swinging at a 74-mph curve to open the fourth. He walked Soler with two outs but got Fitzgerald to fly to right field to end the inning.

An overpowering start it wasn’t, but it was in stark contrast to Kershaw’s last game here, when he retired one of eight batters in a six-run first inning in which he gave six hits, including three doubles and a three-run homer to Gabriel Moreno, in an 11-2 loss to Arizona in the first game of the NL Division Series last Oct. 7.

“There was some stuff I can get better at, but I felt overall, the breaking balls were good,” Kershaw said. “Fastball command left a little to be desired, but for the first time back, I’ll take it.”

That Kershaw’s wife, Ellen, and four kids, and Dr. Neal ElAttrache, the surgeon who repaired his shoulder last fall, were in attendance made the afternoon all the more special for Kershaw.

“There’s a lot of people here and people back home [in Texas] that spent a lot of time with me to help me get back, so it’s really cool that a lot of people cared so much,” Kershaw said. “They spent all this time helping me get back, and they want to see me back out there so all the work isn’t for nothing.”

Kershaw, who made his major league debut as a 20-year-old in 2008, also became the first Dodgers pitcher to play in 17 different seasons, a milestone of longevity that came after a grueling, 8 ½-month rehabilitation process.

“I think there was a point before the surgery, after the surgery, where he felt, ‘Is he ever going to throw another major league pitch?’ “ Roberts said. “I think over the last few years, he’s finally realized that he’s mortal, so then there comes the appreciation of every moment.”

Pitching in

The Dodgers added depth to their rotation by signing right-hander Jordan Lyles, who spent most of this season on Kansas City’s restricted list while tending to a “personal matter,” to a minor league deal. Lyles, 33, will report to the team’s Arizona complex to build up endurance before reporting to a minor league affiliate.

Lyles struggled after signing a two-year, $17-million deal with the Royals in 2023, going 6-17 with a 6.28 ERA in 31 starts, but he was a solid back-end starter for the Baltimore Orioles in 2022, going 12-11 with a 4.42 ERA in 32 starts. He did not allow a run in five relief appearances for Kansas City this season.

For the first time in a long time, it feels like the U.S. women’s national team truly has a fresh slate.

With longtime veterans Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, and Becky Sauerbrunn not on the 2024 roster, and younger stars Jaedyn Shaw and Trinity Rodman preparing to make their Olympic debuts, there is a sense that this tournament is truly a new group of players.

“(We’re) respecting our history, but then also trying to write a new story for this team,” defender Naomi Girma said before the team’s Olympic send-off matches. “Going into this tournament… that’s something that we’re really working on and we’re being intentional about: ‘What are we going to bring with us, and what do we need to change moving forward?’ I think it’s important for any team and program do that to continue being successful.”

However, there’s plenty of continuity from the old guard. Crystal Dunn, Lindsey Horan, and Alyssa Naeher are only a few of the players who bring a thread of history and stability with them, reaching as far back as 2015, when Naeher was a backup goalkeeper at the World Cup. However, only seven of the players on the 2019 World Cup-winning roster are now at this Olympics in France. Without Morgan on the call sheet, there isn’t a remaining Olympic gold medalist.

It’s a good core group of experienced players to have while also leaving a lot of room for relatively younger players — something that was by design according to head coach Emma Hayes, who only joined the group officially in late May.

“Looking through the cap accumulation of the team, there’s been a lack of development, of putting some of the less experienced players in positions where they can develop that experience,” Hayes said after unveiling her tournament roster. “I think it’s important that we have to do that to take the next step. So I’m not looking backwards.”

With a new vibe comes a new search for identity. This 2024 team cannot help but be aware of the fact that the United States, so used to a certain level of global dominance, has not won a major tournament since that heady 2019 run. There have only been two major tournaments since then, but the United States got eliminated by underdog rival Canada in the Tokyo Olympics, scrapping their way to a bronze medal against Australia three years ago. And in the 2023 World Cup, they eked out a round-of 16-appearance, only to crash out against Sweden on penalties.

“We’ve moved on from last summer,” Sophia Smith said from a media call in Marseille before facing Zambia in their opening match of Group B. “It’s a completely new environment and opportunity, a lot of new players. We just look forward. At this point, we take one game at a time, and with Emma coming in, we’ve learned a lot, we’ve grown a lot, and we’ve introduced a lot of new things that I think will help us have success in this tournament.”

This team is determined not to let the spectre of 2023 hang over them. It’s part of the paradox of any team history: you are inevitably shaped by past successes and failures, but you can’t be beholden to them. You have to learn from mistakes without dwelling on them.

This new team — which includes eight out of 22 players who weren’t even born when the 99ers vaulted the U.S. women to legacy status — hasn’t yet settled into a definitive vibe, at least not publicly. It’s understandable that, as a group, they would still feel emotionally up in the air given they haven’t even had a firm hand at the helm until Hayes arrived in late May, and before that spent nine months with an interim head coach.

“The transition wasn’t, in many ways, the easiest,” said Dunn. “But I think the team has done such an incredible job of just not skipping a beat.

“Obviously, we stepped out of the World Cup not feeling too amazing about our performance but I think, at the end of the day, we knew that we have an incredible opportunity to regroup and get back to it.”

That doesn’t mean they lack leadership. Besides captain Horan, many players have cited Dunn, Girma, Tierna Davidson, Rose Lavelle, and Emily Sonnett as stepping up to provide guidance and support. And there are actually only four players on the core Olympic roster with no previous Olympic or senior World Cup experience: Korbin Albert, Sam Coffey, Jenna Nighswonger, and Shaw. Of the alternates, Hal Hershfelt, Croix Bethune, and Emily Sams are also new, but are expected to see less field time, while goalkeeper alternate Jane Campbell was in Tokyo, also as an alternate.

There is a sense that, of the newer players in the mix, this could be the tournament that begins to define the next core group of players; the start of the next era of USWNT superstars.

Though Girma is only 24, she is already highly regarded as a next-in-line candidate for the captain’s armband amidst her stellar center-back play. Davidson, who might finally cement herself as Girma’s defensive partner if she can stay healthy, is only 25, while full-back Nighswonger is 23.

In attack, the U.S. has some of the most exciting names in global football, such as Rodman (22), Smith (23), and Mallory Swanson (26). Add in Shaw, at 19, and even Bethune at 23, and U.S. fans should be breaking down doors to watch these players compete together at the 2027 World Cup. And if 24-year-old midfield phenom Catarina Macario can get and stay healthy, the sky’s the limit under the right coach.

Compatibly blending older and newer players is never a given, but this current group seems to have done it through a mix of player- and staff-led communication. The word “fun” was on everyone’s lips when asked about what emotions were in the air and what social dynamics were starting to take hold with a different set of players. Sonnett, who has been in and out of the USWNT mix since 2015, called the team “kind of a silly group,” describing a dynamic with more room for play, like a round of Heads Up Seven Up because everyone was five minutes early to a team meeting.

“The team vibes have been really great,” said Dunn. “At the end of the day, we’re here to win soccer games, but we need to have fun doing it and that means creating that competitive environment that’s going to bring out the best of us and not just make us so uptight about making mistakes.”

The public pressure on the team to win in 2019 precluded a lot of that grace for mistakes. They were on a streak of high-profile World Cup successes, from challenging an ascendant Japan in the 2011 final to winning it all in what almost felt like a charmed run in 2015 in Canada. The pressure created a bubble of incredible focus, a sense of collective. Not that they were all buddy-buddy about it all the time, but everyone seemed to be on the same page about what they were doing and why.

No room for screwups, especially while the team was fighting for equal pay and better treatment from U.S. Soccer. And there’s nothing like sweating in the labor action trenches next to someone, staring down the possibility of a lockout, to solidify camaraderie.

The 2019 World Cup winners also bonded over their fight for equal pay. (Photo by James Devaney, GC Images)

The 2019 squad also benefited from loud leadership, mostly driven by the outspoken Rapinoe but certainly shared amongst Morgan, Sauerbrunn, and other players such as Ali Krieger, Kelley O’Hara, and even the contrarian Carli Lloyd. This was a squad that banged a drum wherever they went — whether they meant to or not.

This new iteration is still figuring out which drum they want to bang and when. With the pay equity lawsuit well resolved at this point, they get to move other priorities to the top of the list. Winning, of course, but also growth, innovation, adaptation, figuring out what the new pace of global development is like, and even how they might get ahead of that pace.

Dunn pointed out that the way the team cycles in newer players has accelerated, something that the packed soccer calendar and increasingly early player development demand with increasing necessity.

“The biggest difference is, you kind of had to wait to get that first cap,” said Dunn, who made her first USWNT appearance in 2013. “That was the norm. Some of us were in camps for a full year before we got more than two caps and that was kind of our process. And I think now, you’re finding that you almost throw these kids into the fire and see if they can survive, and I think that that’s one way to do it as well.”

Horan, whose leadership style involves one-on-one conversations, said the team will rely on their younger players, who were already rising to the occasion. “New players, young players, the confidence is outstanding,” she said. “I wish I had that when I was 18 coming into this team, so (I’m) proud of them.”

If the younger players have any nerves, they’re certainly not showing it. Part of it is probably getting plenty of club experience; Shaw, Rodman, and Bethune are all high-profile players who carry heavy tactical loads at their NWSL clubs. That’s good for Hayes, who has demonstrated a preference for fluid thinkers who can adapt positionally on the fly, able to press and defend out of several different formations over the course of a game.

Shaw and Rodman are also key pieces of their NWSL teams (Photo by Todd Kirkland, Getty Images)

But behind the tactics are the human connections on which trust rests. As Davidson put it in Colorado, “Having that feeling of someone having your back, I think, is so important in soccer, in a sport, especially when the game is getting tight. You turn to each other. You don’t turn to anybody else.”

Both the older and the younger players seem pleased that that trust is in place. “I think we’re doing such a good job at connecting off the field and just being together,” Rodman said. “It’s not so much isolation. Obviously, we all find that time to be by ourselves. But we’re having fun together. We’re having that human aspect of it as well, of hanging out and not talking about soccer, as hard as it is.”

“We are coming together more than I’ve experienced in my time on this team,” said Sam Coffey, who received her first cap in 2022. “We have a clear philosophy of what we’re trying to do, who we’re trying to be, who we want to be on and off the field. That culture is really being set and those points are being driven home a lot by Emma and her staff.”

When asked to define that philosophy, Coffey demurred on the tactical side of it, but off the field ultimately boiled it down to “Putting the team before yourself.”

“It’s doing whatever it takes for the team to win,” Coffey said. “It is putting the team, the winning culture, the success of the group, before anything involving the individual, and I’m proud to play for a team like that. I want to be on the team like that.”

The team-first ethos isn’t a new one, but its implementation can be as varied as there are ways to score a goal. From the way players describe it, there is a renewed vigor in camp, a sense of possibility and playfulness. The previous team was an autumn season, still vibrant and bountiful but waning towards the end of a cycle. This team is the renewed spring, waiting to see what comes from the seeds they’ve planted, hoping for a glorious summer.

(Top photo: Stephen Nadler/Getty Images; Design: Dan Goldfarb)