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Have you learnt the primary basketball gamers ever to win 5 Olympic Gold medals? Right here’s a touch: they’re former school teammates, NCAA champions, greatest pals and, at one level throughout their careers, have been tremendous aggressive rivals. However once they suited up alongside one another within the crimson, white and blue, they have been magic. Did you determine who it’s but? Nah, they’re not males. Assume once more.
“Sue joined the nationwide staff on the 2002 World Championship, and I joined in 2004. We have been the younger youngsters in Athens,” Diana Taurasi instructed USA Basketball. “It’s very particular to have gone by way of it collectively, as a result of we went by way of the identical experiences on the similar time.”
Whereas Sue Hen retired from the sport simply two years in the past, DT continues to be on the market dropping buckets and taking names towards any and each opponent within the WNBA because the League’s all-time main scorer. She’s been hailed because the GOAT, a moniker that not solely encompasses her profession to this point on the Phoenix Mercury, however on the worldwide stage, too: all through the previous 23 years she’s spent suiting up for USA Basketball, other than Hen, she has the most important assortment of Gold {hardware}, together with 5 Olympic Golds, three FIBA World Cup Golds and a FIBA World Cup Bronze medal. It’s an honor she doesn’t take flippantly, and in her personal phrases, representing USA Basketball is a dedication that she holds to the best regard.
“I simply suppose we take this actually significantly,” Taurasi instructed The Athletic. “We don’t have a look at it as a four-year factor. We have a look at it as a profession.”
Taurasi is a part of a illustrious legacy that the USA Basketball Girls’s Nationwide Workforce has at all times embodied. Courting all the way in which again to 1984, when the ladies’s staff received their first-ever Olympic Gold medal, they’ve constantly put collectively probably the most dominant and profitable squads ever assembled. Look no additional than the previous seven consecutive Olympic Gold medals they’ve received, or the truth that the USA is already the favourite in Paris, at present ranked No. 1 within the 5×5 event and No. 2 going into the three×3 event.
This yr’s roster is filled with champions, MVPs, All-Stars, Rookies of the Yr and legends. DT will swimsuit up alongside fellow Olympic teammates and Gold medalists, together with Chelsea Grey, Brittney Griner, Jewell Loyd, Napheesa Collier, Breanna Stewart and A’ja Wilson, in addition to Kelsey Plum and Jackie Younger (each of whom received Gold within the 3×3 event in 2021). The roster additionally features a handful of standouts who will probably be making their Olympic debut: Alyssa Thomas, Kahleah Copper and Sabrina Ionescu. Led by a training employees that options a number of the most sensible minds within the recreation—head coach Cheryl Reeve, assistant coaches Kara Lawson, Joni Taylor, Mike Thibault, scouts Curt Miller and Tanisha Wright—the 2024 USA Girls’s Nationwide Workforce is locked in and able to run it again. Three years in the past in Tokyo, the U.S. cooked the competitors and defeated Japan, 90-75, to win Gold. DT was on that squad, as have been Loyd, BG, Chelsea, Stewie and A’ja. Now, add Alyssa, Kahleah and Sab within the combine. That’s a complete lot of bucket-getters on one staff.
How did all of those stars come collectively? The apparent reply is a multi-year choice course of that features coaching camps and video games. However, within the phrases of Taurasi, there’s extra to the roster than simply names on an inventory. It’s about chemistry, drawback fixing and bringing collectively a gaggle of opponents who can, and can, execute.
“When you get to the second coaching camp, you type of can see the Olympics from afar,” DT mentioned in an episode of USA Basketball’s “The Nationwide Workforce” sequence, which is precisely titled, How the Sauce Will get Made. “At the least, coaching camp has develop into that rather more vital. Looking for teams that play properly collectively, that determine issues fairly shortly collectively. I believe the one factor from all these Olympics that I’ve discovered is it’s the perfect mixture of gamers who can get to a sure place fairly shortly.”
Gamers are competing for a spot on the 12-person roster, which implies setting apart egos and easily exhibiting that you simply’ve bought what it takes.
Taurasi elaborated: “You need to put your greatest foot ahead, that’s the one means you may make an affect—by being right here and by shopping for into what we’re making an attempt to do as a staff. Each one who’s put that jersey on to date has made that dedication, and I believe meaning loads to the choice committee, to the coaches.”
The choice course of is extremely aggressive, and whereas there’s an abundance of expertise within the WNBA, Taurasi is spot on. As choice committee chair Jennifer Rizzotti instructed the Related Press in April: “We keep on with our ideas of expertise, clearly, positional match, loyalty and expertise. It’s bought to be a mix of a whole physique of labor.”
The ultimate roster is the epitome of simply that. Apart from DT, Griner is likely one of the most skilled Olympians on the staff. A two-time Olympic Gold medalist, BG’s USA Basketball résumé additionally consists of being named 2018 World Cup Gold medal recreation Participant of the Recreation and named a 2014 FIBA World Cup All-Match Workforce honoree. A powerhouse within the paint and a shot blocker, BG’s presence on the staff can even carry a way of resiliency and energy that extends properly past the hardwood. Then there’s Grey, who was drafted into the WNBA only a yr after Griner, and has been a vocal chief. The three-time WNBA champion is the go-to voice on the Las Vegas Aces, even over head coach Becky Hammon. “I’m her assistant,” Hammon as soon as instructed the media. “I inform them [the Aces] on a regular basis, if Chelsea calls one thing and I name one thing, you hearken to Chelsea.”
As for her recreation, Grey brings an unmatched versatility: she’s a scorer who can hit clutch photographs, a playmaker with loopy courtroom imaginative and prescient and a savant with a excessive basketball IQ who could make reads and set her teammates up. Oh, and she or he is aware of how you can carry out underneath strain, because the world noticed when the Aces went back-to-back and received one other WNBA championship final yr. What’s even scarier is that Grey will probably be suiting up alongside the very teammates she simply received the ’chip with, together with two-time MVP Wilson and All-Stars Younger and Plum. If you happen to suppose the Aces have slowed down in any respect since they dominated in 2023, suppose once more. Wilson’s star energy has solely continued to ascend to a different stage this season and, as we went to press, she set a WNBA document towards the Dallas Wings as the primary participant, ever, to have a minimum of 35 factors, 10 rebounds and 5 steals. Which, would possibly we add, is her tenth profession recreation with a minimum of 30/10. She’s additionally the primary to put up a minimum of 35 factors and 5 steals in a number of video games. Wilson is aggressive, fearless and true to herself and what she’s about, on and off the courtroom. Hammon mentioned it greatest. Wilson is “the perfect on the earth.” As for KP and Younger, each are deadly guards who know what it takes to carry their very own on the worldwide stage. Again in 2021, they each received Gold within the U.S. Olympic 3×3 Girls’s event. So, yeah, good luck to different international locations that gotta go up towards a part of the Aces’ core.
The opposite most skilled Olympian is the reigning WNBA MVP. Stewie is an authorized winner, a lot in order that she’s simply one of many 11 gamers, ever, to have received an Olympic Gold medal, FIBA World Cup Gold medal, WNBA title and NCAA title in her profession to this point (Griner and DT are additionally a part of that checklist). Stewie’s been exhibiting out for USA Basketball since highschool—in 2011, she was the youngest member and solely highschool athlete to compete within the Pan American Video games, the place she began all 4 video games and led the staff in scoring (15.3 ppg), rebounds (11.3) and blocks (1.1). Poised and primed for greatness because the starting, Stewart is coming off a WNBA career-high scoring common final season (23.0 ppg) and the momentum of serving to lead the New York Liberty to the WNBA Finals for the primary time since ’02. Along with her suiting up alongside the identical gamers she confronted within the Finals, the U.S. staff has bought to be a scary sight for opponents this summer season.
The remainder of the roster is stacked with scorers and playmakers. Napheesa Collier was a part of that 2020 Olympic Gold medal-winning staff, and since then has solely leveled up her recreation. Phee is at present dominating on the Lynx and averaging a double-double (a second-career greatest 20.0 factors and a career-high 10.2 rebounds). Then there’s Loyd, who led the League in scoring final season with a career-high 24.7 factors and is an Olympic and three-time FIBA World Cup/3×3 Gold medalist. One other member of that 2022 FIBA World Cup squad is Thomas, a constant and loopy environment friendly strolling triple-double who will probably be making her Olympic debut. She’s additionally the primary former Maryland Terrapin to play on the U.S. Girls’s Nationwide Workforce since Vicky Bullett, who received Gold in ’88 and Bronze in ’92.
AT brings a decade of WNBA expertise and veteran management, and she or he’ll match proper in together with her USA Olympic teammates. Then there’s Kahleah Copper, who brings a dynamic scoring prowess and difficult Philly mentality that makes her licensed. After profitable a ’chip with the Chicago Sky in 2021, she elevated her recreation, too. The three-time WNBA All-Star, who has been dropping 30-plus level video games on any given night time this season, will carry that very same power on the worldwide stage in her first-ever Olympics, too.
Final, however definitely by no means least, is Sabrina Ionescu. It doesn’t matter whether or not she’s going up towards opponents within the W or the best shooter of all time, Sab, with one furrow of her forehead and area on the three-point line, is assured to shoot the lights out of the gymnasium, it doesn’t matter what gymnasium it’s. Oh, and she or he’s additionally averaging a career-high this yr, her fourth season with the New York Liberty. Expertise is one factor, however recreation at all times speaks for itself.
And there you will have it. In the event that they win all of it, the 2024 USA Girls’s Nationwide Workforce will make historical past by bringing the eighth consecutive Gold medal, and fortunate No. 10 total, again to the States. Legends of the previous instilled greatness, however this squad has what it takes to hold that legacy and extra.
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