For this US women’s basketball Olympic run, stop arguing and enjoy what we have

August 8, 2024

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For this US women’s basketball Olympic run, stop arguing and enjoy what we have

PARIS — They played badly in the first half against Nigeria. Really not well.

At halftime they led by 19 points.

Such is life for the U.S. women’s national basketball team, which won its 59th consecutive Olympic game on Wednesday, beating Nigeria 88-74, to advance to the semifinals on Friday, where it will play Australia. They are now 76-3 all-time in the Olympics, dating back to the introduction of women’s basketball in 1976. They haven’t lost an Olympic basketball game since Aug. 5, 1992 — and I know that because I covered that game that day in Badalona, Spain.

It was late in the 1992 Summer Games. The U.S. women, like all the other competitors, were overshadowed by the NBA-dominant Dream Team. But that didn’t mean the U.S. women were expected to win gold any less than the men. In their three pool games in Barcelona, they had won by an average of 45.3 points per game. Teresa Edwards, Teresa Weatherspoon, Katrina McClain and Cynthia Cooper were all future Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famers, as was their coach, Theresa Grentz.

But they lost in the semifinals to the Unified Team, an amalgamation of former Soviet Union states, 79-73. And the emotion afterward was not so much anger as shock. Losing seemed impossible.

And since ’92 it’s actually been that way.

This year’s U.S. women are just two wins shy of an eighth consecutive Olympic gold medal, a streak that began with the “Dream On” team in Atlanta in 1996. The program also hasn’t lost a game in the World Cup since a semifinal loss to Russia in 2006, and has won 30 straight Cup games and four straight championships since then. In official FIBA competition, the women have now won 80 games in a row; the overall record for the women’s Olympic, World Cup and junior national programs under USA Basketball is 174-3.

“The most dominant team of all time, I think, in any sport,” Kevin Durant said Tuesday night.

“You have a potential six-time gold medalist in Diana Taurasi,” he continued. “So you just have legendary players at all levels, legendary coaches. It’s just setting the standard for what USAB is on the women’s side — not just the women’s side, but overall. So I’m looking forward to supporting them.”

On Wednesday, LeBron James, Katie Ledecky, Michael Phelps, Dirk Nowitzki and Devin Booker sat courtside and watched the dynasty in action.

Why then is the discussion almost always about who is not on the team in a given cycle, and not about who is?

You can make the argument — the key word here is “argue” — that USA Basketball’s selection committee gets important picks wrong, that there’s more politics involved than merit. This year, it was Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese and Arike Ogunbowale who didn’t make the team, as did Nneka Ogwumike in 2020 and Candace Parker in 2016. (Ogwumike, a member of the 2014 and 2018 World Cup gold-medal teams, was the only U.S.-born WNBA MVP not to make the U.S. Olympic teamwhich prompted Parker to call her omission “bulls—.”)

But this is about who the commission is has selected over the decades, and that was selected this year. Because that standard has remained impeccable for two generations of players, with a third — Clark, Reese etc. — under construction, likely to join the dreadnought team in 2028, when the Summer Games are held in Los Angeles.

Every player on the 2024 team has won at least one Olympic or World Cup gold medal. A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart each have two WNBA Most Valuable Player awards. Wilson and the other Las Vegas Aces on the team — Kelsey Plum, Jackie Young and Chelsea Gray — are going for a W Threepeat.

Plum has two WNBA titles, a 3×3 gold medal in 2021 and was the WNBA All-Star Game MVP in 2022. She comes into this team off the bench and won’t get consistent minutes. And she didn’t raise an eyebrow. She understands the assignment.

“It’s the gold standard, and that’s really what it is,” Stewart said. “We expect to win gold. We know that everything leading up to that is important, and making sure we’re at our best. The way we prepare ourselves in practice, mentally and physically. And knowing that we have a lot, because of those who played before us.”

“We know that history won’t give you anything,” said Diana Taurasi, who is chasing her sixth consecutive Olympic gold. (Marvin Ibo Guengoer – GES Sportfoto/Getty Images)

There have been longer streaks in the modern Olympic era. The U.S. men won 16 consecutive gold medals in the pole vault between 1896 and 1968. The U.S. men’s swimming team had won 15 consecutive gold medals in the 4×100 medley swimming (excluding 1980, when the U.S. boycotted the Summer Games in Moscow that year) between 1960 and 2020 before being defeated by China in the final here last weekend. The Soviet Union/Russia won 12 consecutive gold medals in the purple figure skating between 1964 and 2006.

And the South Korean women’s archery team won their tenth consecutive Olympic gold medal here, a series of 36 years dating back to the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the sport’s debut at the Olympics.

Whether or not the American women’s series lasts that long, it’s still impressive. Even with the weight of everything that came before it weighing on their shoulders. Who can match those spirits?

“They don’t think about it as much as we all talk about it because they weren’t involved in it,” U.S. coach Cheryl Reeve said Wednesday.

“That’s not what they’re thinking about,” Reeve said. “They’re thinking about this journey and their mission to win a gold medal. Of course, they hear the talk. But it’s not something they think about and talk about. I think we’re a pretty focused team on trying to win the next game.”

Still, what the American women have done collectively is remarkable. No matter the coach, from Tara VanDerveer (1996), to Nell Fortner (2000), to Van Chancellor (2004), to Anne Donovan (2008), to Geno Auriemma (2012 and 2016), to Dawn Staley (2021), to now Reeve, and no matter the team’s leaders — Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes, to Tina Thompson and Sylvia Fowles, to Taurasi and Parker, to Sue Bird and Maya Moore, to Stewart and Wilson — there has never been a hiccup. They keep winning, and winning, and winning.

They may not delve into history, but they do understand the norms that apply to them.

“My first game in Tokyo, even though we didn’t have any fans, I was like, ‘No, this is the Olympics,'” Wilson said. “There’s not a lot of people who watch WNBA games. They might not even care. But when we have those three letters on our chest and we’re playing for something gold, it’s like everyone is tuned in. So it was one of those moments where I was like, ‘No, this is a big, big moment. And I’ll never take that moment for granted, because there’s a lot of other people who might wish they were in that situation. And there’s a lot of other people who are trained to be there, and they weren’t there. So I don’t take it for granted.”

The streak will end eventually, of course. The world won’t catch up to the U.S. women overnight, but it’s coming, in fits and starts. Teams know the leveling power of shooting big 3s, and some, like Japan, are doing it successfully. Belgium, which will play host France in the other semifinal on Friday, has several WNBA players on its roster, including 2019 Finals MVP Emma Meesseman. Nigeria was the first African team, male or female, to reach the Olympic quarterfinals, a testament to the substantial growth of basketball on the continent in recent years, through programs like the NBA-backed Basketball Africa League, FIBA’s Africa Women’s Basketball League and grassroots programs like Toronto Raptors vice president and president Masai Ujiri’s Giants of Africa.

Australia’s golden era behind Naismith Hall of Famer Lauren Jackson earned her a 2006 World Cup gold medal and three consecutive silver medals at the Olympics from 2000 to 2008. Jackson, now 43, plays a Taurasi-esque role for this version of the Opals, who are ranked No. 3 in the world and are back in the semifinals with a roster full of WNBA talent such as Sami Whitcomb and Ezi Magbegor of the Seattle Storm, Alanna Smith of the Minnesota Lynx and Jade Melbourne of the Washington Mystics. They are coached by Sandy Brondello of the Liberty.

As the WNBA expands in the coming years to capitalize on its unprecedented popularity and economic growth, more jobs will become available. That will inevitably mean more international players will fill some of those spots — and use that W experience to help their national teams in the years to come. More dollars in the U.S. system for women’s basketball via the W and college basketball will inevitably seed programs around the world, via more camps and development programs.

That’s why it’s still important to have someone like Taurasi around, regardless of her stats, for her final Olympics. There’s nothing she hasn’t seen or experienced in her 24 years of USA Basketball/FIBA play. She’s the O-est of G’s. No one has won more, at more levels, for so long. No one sets the tone better, or keeps the most important thing the most important thing. She’s a human thermostat. It’s not like she’s going to stand on a heater at 42 and do what she could do on the court 15 years ago to help you come back from a deficit in the semifinals or finals.

What she’s going to do is set the tone that will keep you from becoming complacent.

“We know history isn’t going to win you anything,” Taurasi said Wednesday. She’s probably said it a hundred times, whether it’s winning three straight national championships at UConn or during her two decades in Phoenix, where she led the Mercury to three WNBA titles.

“We’ve won, I don’t know how many gold medals,” she said. “This tournament is not going to be won. You come out there and play hard. Nigeria. Australia, in two days. These teams are hard. They’ve been playing together for a long time. We’ve been together for two and a half weeks and we’re trying to figure it out. And it’s always been our strength to be selfless. The next man, the next woman, to win a gold medal.”

That’s why they’ve been winning for so long and keep winning. They think they haven’t achieved anything yet.