Muscle memory and the big moment

There’s a sequence at the end of Court of Gold — Netflix’s documentary on Team USA’s path to the basketball gold medal at the Paris Olympics — that I’ve watched three times now. France had cut a fifteen-point lead down to four. Victor Wembanyama was having a great game. The home crowd was starting to believe. And then Steph Curry took over. He asked Steph Curry to give him the ball. He knew what he wanted to do. Three consecutive three pointers followed. Then, with fifty seconds left, doubled-teamed and fading back from well behind the arc, he launched a shot that French captain Nicolas Batum described as something only Steph could make from that angle. It went in. Steph turned to the crowd for the first time all night and made his famous sleep gesture — the game was done. What stayed with me wasn’t the shot itself. It was Steph’s description of the moment. Missing was not an option. He’d made that shot before — thousands of times in practice. When it mattered most, he didn’t think.…