Team USA’s basketball superstars are staying outside the Olympic Village—at a cost of $15 million

For most American squads at the Games, lodging, transportation and security might run $400,000.

But the Dream Team established a luxurious precedent 32 years ago. 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.

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.