Previewing the 2024 USA Basketball Women's National Team

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Are you aware the primary basketball gamers ever to win 5 Olympic Gold medals? Right here’s a touch: they’re former school teammates, NCAA champions, greatest buddies and, at one level throughout their careers, have been tremendous aggressive rivals. However after they suited up alongside one another within the pink, white and blue, they have been magic. Did you determine who it’s but? Nah, they’re not males. Suppose once more.

“Sue joined the nationwide crew on the 2002 World Championship, and I joined in 2004. We have been the younger youngsters in Athens,” Diana Taurasi informed 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 date on the Phoenix Mercury, however on the worldwide stage, too: all through the previous 23 years she’s spent suiting up for USA Basketball, apart from Hen, she has the biggest 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 calmly, 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 critically,” Taurasi informed 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 Ladies’s Nationwide Workforce has at all times embodied. Courting all the best way again to 1984, when the ladies’s crew gained their first-ever Olympic Gold medal, they’ve persistently put collectively essentially the most dominant and profitable squads ever assembled. Look no additional than the previous seven consecutive Olympic Gold medals they’ve gained, 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 gained 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 among 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 Ladies’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 an entire lot of bucket-getters on one crew.

How did all of those stars come collectively? The plain 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, downside fixing and bringing collectively a gaggle of rivals who can, and can, execute.

“When you get to the second coaching camp, you sort 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. “No less than, coaching camp has turn into that rather more necessary. Looking for teams that play nicely collectively, that work out issues fairly rapidly collectively. I feel the one factor from all these Olympics that I’ve realized is it’s the most effective mixture of gamers who can get to a sure place fairly rapidly.”

Gamers are competing for a spot on the 12-person roster, which suggests setting apart egos and easily exhibiting that you just’ve acquired what it takes.

Taurasi elaborated: “You need to put your greatest foot ahead, that’s the one approach you can also make an affect—by being right here and by shopping for into what we’re attempting to do as a crew. Each one that’s put that jersey on up to now has made that dedication, and I feel which means rather a lot 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 informed the Related Press in April: “We follow our ideas of expertise, clearly, positional match, loyalty and expertise. It’s acquired to be a mixture of a whole physique of labor.”

The ultimate roster is the epitome of simply that. Except for DT, Griner is likely one of the most skilled Olympians on the crew. A two-time Olympic Gold medalist, BG’s USA Basketball résumé additionally contains 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 crew may also convey a way of resiliency and power that extends nicely 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 informed the media. “I inform them [the Aces] on a regular basis, if Chelsea calls one thing and I name one thing, you take heed to Chelsea.”

As for her recreation, Grey brings an unmatched versatility: she’s a scorer who can hit clutch pictures, 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 he or she is aware of learn how to carry out beneath strain, because the world noticed when the Aces went back-to-back and gained one other WNBA championship final yr. What’s even scarier is that Grey will probably be suiting up alongside the very teammates she simply gained the ’chip with, together with two-time MVP Wilson and All-Stars Younger and Plum. In the event you 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 file towards the Dallas Wings as the primary participant, ever, to have a minimum of 35 factors, 10 rebounds and 5 steals. Which, may 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 most effective on this planet.” 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 gained Gold within the U.S. Olympic 3×3 Ladies’s event. So, yeah, good luck to different nations that gotta go up towards a part of the Aces’ core.

The opposite most skilled Olympian is the reigning WNBA MVP. Stewie is a licensed winner, a lot in order that she’s simply one of many 11 gamers, ever, to have gained an Olympic Gold medal, FIBA World Cup Gold medal, WNBA title and NCAA title in her profession to date (Griner and DT are additionally a part of that listing). 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 crew in scoring (15.3 ppg), rebounds (11.3) and blocks (1.1). Poised and primed for greatness for the reason that 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. crew has acquired to be a scary sight for opponents this summer time.

The remainder of the roster is stacked with scorers and playmakers. Napheesa Collier was a part of that 2020 Olympic Gold medal-winning crew, 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. Ladies’s Nationwide Workforce since Vicky Bullett, who gained Gold in ’88 and Bronze in ’92.

AT brings a decade of WNBA expertise and veteran management, and he or she’ll match proper in along 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 successful 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 evening this season, will convey that very same vitality 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 house 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 he or she’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 have got it. In the event that they win all of it, the 2024 USA Ladies’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.