The Paris Olympics is almost here, and the U.S. men’s basketball team has set their sights on a fifth consecutive gold medal. But before they begin their gold medal push, the team recently got a grand send-off for their Paris 2024 campaign, and none other than former President Barack Obama delivered a rousing 10-minute speech emphasizing the significance of representing the United States.
Probably the funniest and most memorable moment of the event, however, came right before the former president delivered his speech. Obama went on to greet all the players and, in the process of doing so, unironically recreated a wildly famous Key & Peele meme.
Barack Obama dapping up the players on Team USA pic.twitter.com/pqy8GdIOnq
— 2Cool2Blog (@2Cool2Blog) July 10, 2024
The original Key & Peele sketch is from 2014 and features Jordan Peele as Barack Obama. In the skit, Peele’s Obama walks around cordially shaking hands with white audience members and warmly greeting every black bystander like family.
Bro recreated this skit pic.twitter.com/mb2CqkmbM9
— Damilare (@damilare_xn) July 11, 2024
At USA Basketball’s 50th anniversary celebration on Tuesday night, Obama, whose attendance was a surprise to most attendees, gave a 10-minute speech emphasizing the significance of representing the United States and declared himself the world’s biggest basketball fan.
“I’m pretty confident that they’re going to be bringing back the gold and representing us the way we should be represented around the world,” Obama said.
The event was attended by multiple basketball Hall of Famers, Olympians, and USA Basketball stars, including Spencer Haywood, Cheryl Miller, Dawn Staley, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, Sheryl Swoopes, Nancy Lieberman, Reggie Miller, Steve Smith, Tim Hardaway, Doug Collins, Mike Krzyzewski, and Jerry Colangelo.
“I just want to come here to obviously help send off the soon-to-be gold-medal winners,” Obama said. “But I want to come by and say thank you to the legends who have represented USA Basketball and America for 50 years now.”
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Team USA begins its five-game exhibition tune-up for the Paris Olympics on Wednesday against Canada.
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Key & Peele is an American sketch comedy television series created by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele for Comedy Central. Each episode of the show consists mainly of several pre-taped skits starring the two actors. The sketches cover a variety of societal topics, often with a focus on American popular culture, ethnic stereotypes, social awkwardness and race relations.
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