Stephen Curry got the question and didn't even have to think about the answer. Someone wanted to know what French words that the Golden State Warriors star picked up during his gold-medal experience at the Paris Olympics this summer.
“Nuit nuit,” Curry said.
Of course.
The hottest basketball move in the world this summer wasn’t a crossover dribble, or a stepback jumper, or some sort of no-look pass. It was the summer of “night night,” Curry's signature hands-to-the-side-of-the-face gesture, one that he breaks out when the game is over — basically, when he's put the other team to sleep. The whole world saw it after his dazzling stretch of four 3-pointers, the drama growing with each one, in the final couple minutes of USA Basketball's gold-medal win over France in August.
Inter Miami's Lionel Messi — only the biggest soccer star in the world — did the night-night a few weeks ago. At the Presidents Cup last weekend, Si Woo Kim celebrated a chip-in by doing the night-night (a bit prematurely, given that the U.S. went on to win the event yet again) and at the Democratic National Convention, even Warriors coach Steve Kerr capped his speech in support of Vice President Kamala Harris by making the gesture.
And as this NBA season starts — all teams are now in training camp — it's still the rage.
“I've seen it at the DNC, I've seen it at the Presidents Cup in golf, I've seen it all over, Messi did it,” Curry said. “I think Steve takes the cake in knowing that was a good time to pull it at the end of a great speech and getting some good energy in the building. Si Woo Kim, shout out to you. I appreciate him doing it — even though I told him he’s got to remind himself about time and score and knowing when you pull a night-night out, you got to win.”
The night-night was epic.
The four shots that preceded the gesture — the four shots that delivered gold to the U.S. — they're still the talk of the NBA, too.
Warriors teammate Brandon Podziemski has seen Curry pull off all sorts of remarkable feats, both in practices and games.
And as he watched the gold-medal game, he had a hunch Curry had something special coming.
“I just really thought, like, this is Steph being Steph,” Podziemski said. “And what I mean by that is, he just gets in these modes and these phases where, like, I don’t know what happens. You just give him the ball and you just let him do his thing and that’s it.”
That's exactly what the Americans did for those couple of minutes. He tried passing the ball to Kevin Durant a couple of times; Durant just immediately sent it back his way. Devin Booker had a layup chance; he threw the ball back beyond the arc to Curry instead. It was his time. They knew it. France knew it. Podziemski knew it.
“I see it all the time in practice,” Podziemski said. “He just lets his body take over.”
Karl-Anthony Towns was on his couch with about 3 minutes left in the gold medal game, watching just like the rest of the world.
He didn't stay seated for long.
“It got me off the couch,” said Towns, the four-time NBA All-Star who's about to enter his 10th season. "I am 28 going on 29. I’ve been in the NBA 10 years. I’ve played against this man four times a year. I’ve never had a man make me feel like I was 15 years old and I've got to get off the couch and shoot some damn basketballs. I’ve never — never — had that.”
Towns said what made it even better was that Curry made four different shots, four different ways, four different sets of footwork involved.
“It was the greatest shooting expo I've ever seen,” Towns said.
Miami guard Tyler Herro saw earlier in the Olympics that Curry was struggling a bit with his shot.
He knew that wasn't going to last. Sure enough, he was right.
“It's the preparation that he does, the mindset that he has,” Herro said. “It didn't surprise me. Everyone knows how good he is and how hard he works and prepares. That’s kind of what I kind of try to take away from him, what he does, how he works, how he does everything game speed.”
Herro knows the shots — and the night-night — will be replayed forever.
“I mean, the influence he has, not only on basketball in America, but everywhere," Herro said. “They're doing it in FIBA games. Messi's doing it. I can only imagine what the rest of the world is like. That's Steph. It's so crazy.”
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba
FILE - United States' Stephen Curry (4) reacts after winning a men's gold medal basketball game against France at Bercy Arena at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Aug. 10, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)
FILE - United States' Stephen Curry (4) celebrates after beating France to win the gold medal during a men's gold medal basketball game at Bercy Arena at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Aug. 10, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File)
FILE - United States' Stephen Curry (4) and LeBron James (6) celebrate after beating France to win the gold medal during a men's gold medal basketball game at Bercy Arena at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Aug. 10, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Long before Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa mini-empire of bestselling cookbooks and TV shows ever took off, she found herself at an airport, wanting to learn to fly.
It was the late 1960s and she was a newlywed in Fayetteville, North Carolina. She and her soldier-husband, Jeffrey, would often pass a small private airport and Garten was intrigued.
She marched into the terminal to find out about taking flying lessons. “I’m really sorry,” the guy at the desk told her, “but we don’t have anybody who’ll teach a girl how to fly.”
Do you think that stopped Ina Garten?
The story of how she refused to budge until she got lessons in a cockpit is included in her new memoir, "Be Ready When the Luck Happens," which distills stories from her life into lessons for foodies and non-foodies, alike.
“I wanted it to be fun to read because otherwise nobody would read this,” she tells The Associated Press. “I wanted it to be stories from my life, but I also wanted each story to have a point — in the way you could take a recipe away and make a chocolate cake, I want you to take the idea away and be able to use it in your life.”
The memoir — written with help from writer Deborah Davis — is packed with stories of Garten pushing for her vision, not least when in 1978 she spotted an ad in The New York Times and on a whim bought a little specialty food store in the Hamptons called Barefoot Contessa.
At the time, she was 30, writing policies on nuclear energy at the White House and had never worked in food, outside of re-selling Dunkin’ Donuts to hungry students in her dorm room in college.
“It sounded a little crazy, but I was out of my mind with excitement. I didn't know if it would be the best decision or the worst mistake I ever made,” she writes of the store, named after a 1954 Ava Gardner movie but perfectly summing up her philosophy of both elegant and earthy.
Garten would, of course, turn it into a global, inviting brand thanks to her keen eye for quality and dedication to sourcing the finest ingredients. She also put in the long hours, learning each dish and even sleeping in the store.
“The process of writing the book really kind of gave me confidence that this wasn’t just luck — that I had actually worked really hard for it with determination and vision,” she says “I stuck with what I wanted. And my life has turned out so much better than I could have even dreamed.”
Fans know much of her story already since her cookbooks are filled with personal anecdotes, but they may not know about her chilly childhood in Connecticut.
She describes her father as abusive at times, a man who told her when she was 15 that no one would ever love her. Her mother was distant and used food as a source of control, serving broiled chicken or fish with canned peas and carrots. “I spent my early life searching — no, begging — for flavor,” she writes.
That early nightmare helped her down the road. “My childhood, because it was so painful, it gave me enormous empathy for people,” she says. That meant she could read customers, putting herself in their shoes.
Readers will also learn for the first time about her six-month separation from Jeffrey, which took them to the brink of divorce. Their relationship has lately been heralded on social media — #couplegoals or #relationshipgoals — as an ideal partnership, but Gartner reveals it took work.
After finding her new career path, Garten rebelled at the traditional domestic chores expected of her — cooking, cleaning, shopping, managing. “When I bought Barefoot Contessa, I shattered our traditional roles — took a baseball bat to them and left them in pieces,” she writes. Following some time apart, the couple agreed to meet each other halfway.
“There are lessons that any reader can find throughout, specifically about persistence and trusting yourself and your instincts and also taking chances,” says Gillian Blake, executive vice president, publisher and editor-in-chief of Crown & Currency.
“I think there’s a thematic resonance between the way she’s taught people how to cook and the way she teases out these inspirational lessons for larger life questions.”
Garten may be known for her approachability, but she admits to having a stubborn streak — “a barrier to me isn’t a stop sign; it’s a call to action,” she writes — and she isn’t a blushing flower. She once worked in the backroom of a strip club.
She writes that she faced off both a robber at gunpoint who wanted $50 and a bank officer who wouldn’t make a loan to her business because she was a woman and likely would soon have babies.
There are also lighter stories about a memorable lunch with Mel Brooks, and meeting Elmo, Jennifer Garner and Taylor Swift, plus a boozy tale of playing beer bong with soccer star Abby Wambach.
There are practical lessons — like standing up for yourself, even when it’s hard or taking a risk. Find just one person who really believes in you, she argues.
"People who are well known and successful aren’t there because they are smarter, more creative. It’s because they hit a wall and they just said, ‘I don’t even see the wall. I’m going to get around the wall. I really want to do this and I’m going to figure it out,’" she says.
“One thing I learned by doing the book, which surprised me, is I had a lot more courage than I thought I had. And I realized that those things that I did with courage were the making of my life.”
FILE - Ina Garten appears at the 28th annual Webby Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on Monday, May 13, 2024, in New York. Garten released a memoir, "Be Ready When the Luck Happens." (Photo by CJ Rivera/Invision/AP, File)
