LeBron James stayed.
The other 12,000 who had previously packed into Eiffel Tower Stadium for the nightcap beach volleyball match, between Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth and China’s Chen Xue and Xinyi Xia? Gone. Packed it in after an hour or so weather delay that drenched Paris in lightning and showers and left the stadium an eerie resemblance to the fanless Tokyo Games.
But James, the flagbearer for the USA, remained with his family, watching on as Nuss and Kloth closed out their closest match of the Games, a 15-21, 21-16, 15-12 thriller over China.
“The fact that LeBron stayed is pretty special,” said Nuss, who also added that she could now check “playing at the base of the Eiffel Tower in front of zero people at midnight” off her bucket list.
Another check off that list? Winning pool in the Olympic Games.
Nuss and Kloth finished pool play 3-0, with the win over China and sweeps over Australia’s Mariafe Artacho and Taliqua Clancy and Canada’s Sophie Bukovec and Heather Bansley. In the single-elimination round of 16, TKN will play the winner of one of the lucky loser matchups.
But winning pool, while nice, is not what they came to Paris for.
“We came here for some hardware,” Nuss said. “We’re not content. I don’t think we’ve put our best play out there. Now it’s win or go home. Everything needs to be on the table.”
Thursday’s match was certainly not their best. Serve-receive struggles put them in a hole early to Xia and Xue, and after trailing at the opening switch, the Americans were never able to regain the lead, dropping their first and only set of the Games. Not that they were overly concerned.
This is the sort of issue that occasionally rears its head. It did so in the Gstaad Elite16, and they recovered perfectly fine, with a second straight gold medal. They recovered just as well in Paris, leaning, as ever, on their world-class defense to bail them out until the passing steadied.
“I did not pass the ball well,” Kloth, forever frank with herself, said afterwards. “That was a huge factor and I had to calm down. I leaned into Kristen and said I need you right now. I was struggling, so I was leaning on her.”
Nuss is content playing that role, for she knows that, no matter how choppy things may be getting on offense, they can always lean on one another — and they can always lean on their defense. Nuss added 11 more digs to her tournament-leading 44 — 16 more than No. 2 Mariafe Artacho.
“I know if serve receive is struggling, I trust our defense and I know we’re going to be able to earn points,” said Nuss, who was voted the 2023 Beach Pro Tour Defensive Player of the Year. “It was just trusting us and I knew our serve receive was going to settle itself out.”
It did, as it almost always does. Even when the weather delay halted their momentum, up 3-2 in the third, it did little but delay the inevitable. They stayed active throughout the delay, their trainer keeping them moving.
“Little time for dilly dally,” Nuss said.
They neither dillied nor dallied. China never led again as the USA slowly tacked onto their lead, alas closing it after midnight.
“I just thought back to practice where our coach [Drew Hamilton] says ‘You have to win these five points right now,’ ” Kloth said. “At the end of practice, you’re dead tired, but you’re going to find a way to earn five points, earn 10 points.”
They found a way to earn 15, and when they turned to the empty stadium to give their thanks, Kloth’s jaw plummeted to the sand, her hands cupping the side of her face for there, at the top, were four lone spectators, whooping and cheering for the USA.
Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth are a show LeBron James couldn’t miss.
