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They posed for pictures, hamming it up whereas displaying their medals. They beamed with satisfaction because the Nationwide Anthem was performed. And a few of them even cried.
Then, they mirrored on what that they had achieved: a seventh straight Olympic Gold medal and the kind of uncommon dynastic run that makes them some of the legendary groups in basketball historical past. The one outfit with extra consecutive championships is the Boston Celtics, which captured eight consecutive NBA crowns from 1959-66. However since Invoice Russell and his compadres weren’t taking up the entire world, an argument could be made that the U.S. Girls’s Nationwide Workforce is essentially the most dominant hoops squad ever.
The 2021 win over Japan within the Tokyo Olympic Video games captured the Gold and prolonged the U.S. successful streak to a exceptional 55 video games. There have been no hiccups or off nights. The crew has operated as a thresher, ripping by means of each opponent and sustaining a uncommon focus that has produced legendary outcomes.
“Our sustained success happens due to the sacrifice of our gamers,” mentioned 2021 head coach Daybreak Staley, who performed on three of the seven victorious groups. “We at all times have the most effective of the most effective.”
That makes Sue Hen and Diana Taurasi the most effective of the most effective of the most effective. They captured their fifth Gold medals in Tokyo and supplied the type of veteran management that has been an indicator of the ladies’s crew throughout the streak. Sylvia Fowles earned her fourth Gold with the victory. Out of the three, solely Taurasi is taking part in on this yr’s Video games.
“There may be an final honor and satisfaction with carrying this jersey,” mentioned Taurasi. “I hope the following era feels that very same satisfaction, that very same respect, that very same accountability to ensure to come back out right here and play the precise method. There’s nothing prefer it. There’s nothing like taking part in within the Olympics…If you put that USA in your chest, you’re taking part in for everybody who loves basketball in our nation, and that accountability that weighs heavy on us. That’s most likely one factor we received’t miss.”
Though ladies’s basketball didn’t turn into an Olympic sport till 1976, the connection between USA Basketball and the nation’s high feminine gamers dates again a lot additional. U.S. groups have competed in World Championship/Cup and Pan American Video games competitions for the reason that Fifties. The ladies’s recreation has been an vital—and extremely profitable—a part of USA Basketball, and the continued success and domination of U.S. groups reveals how strong the game is on this nation.
U.S. ladies have received 9 Olympic Gold medals and 11 World Cup titles. They’ve featured the nation’s finest gamers and a few of its most legendary coaches. Throughout its 50 years of existence, USA Basketball has strived to be the usual for the game worldwide, and because of the success of its ladies’s groups, that aim has turn into a actuality.
“This simply doesn’t occur in a single day,” Taurasi mentioned after the Tokyo Gold medal recreation. “This can be a course of that occurs through the years.”
EARLY DAYS
For many individuals, their first glimpse of ladies’s basketball was within the Affiliation for Intercollegiate Athletics for Girls (AIAW) school recreation or the primary time the Worldwide Olympic Committee allowed ladies’s basketball to be contested. However U.S. ladies’s basketball goes again properly earlier than that. In 1926, the AAU started holding nationwide championship tournaments, and 27 years later, in Santiago, Chile, the U.S. captured its first-ever world title.
Led by Katherine Washington, the 1953 crew was made from seven members of the Nashville Enterprise Faculty crew, one future member and one other participant, and it dumped the host Chile crew, 49-36, within the last. Washington was once more excellent 4 years later, when the U.S. went to Rio and blitzed to a 6-0 report and a second-straight title. A 51-48 victory over the Soviet Union within the last recreation clinched the Gold.
That may be the U.S. crew’s final victory over the us for a very long time. The Soviets received the following 4 World Championship tournaments and went an ideal 23-0 within the course of. When the groups met within the first Olympic ladies’s competitors, the 1976 Video games in Montreal, the us ripped the U.S. crew, 112-77, within the group stage. Quite a lot of circumstances saved the groups aside after that. The us didn’t take part within the 1979 World Championships, held in Seoul, as a result of the nation didn’t have diplomatic relations with South Korea.
The USA boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics, which meant the groups’ assembly within the ’83 World Championships in Sao Paulo, Brazil, was their first in seven years. The outcome was a crushing, 84-82 American loss within the Gold medal recreation.
However that was it for any stage of American disappointment. Huge issues had been forward, and the U.S. ladies had been about to point out the world how the game was performed.
STEPPING FORWARD
When the U.S. crew arrived in Montreal in ’76 for the first-ever Olympics to incorporate a ladies’s competitors, they discovered a two-bedroom residence ready for them. That meant 12 gamers must cram into bunk beds and keep away from tripping over one another. These modest beginnings helped create the sturdy backbone that has pushed the U.S. groups in worldwide play.
The Soviets boycotted the ’84 Los Angeles Video games, however the proficient U.S. crew that received Gold featured standouts like Cheryl Miller and Lynette Woodard and was coached by the legendary Pat Summitt. Whereas the us’s absence led many to debate whether or not the Individuals might have defeated their predominant rivals, the ’88 Seoul Olympics answered any questions.
The U.S. received Gold and whipped the Soviets, 102-88, within the semifinals. The trio of Katrina McClain, Teresa Edwards and Cynthia Cooper led the crew and made the Individuals virtually invincible. That wasn’t the case 4 years later, in Barcelona. Whereas the lads’s Dream Workforce stomped its technique to Gold, the ladies might solely handle a Bronze, due to a semifinal loss to the Unified Workforce, as the previous Soviet Union was then recognized. That may be the final time the ladies’s crew would stand on one thing apart from the highest stage of the podium. Starting in Atlanta, the U.S. grew to become unstoppable.
The ’96 ladies’s crew was an ideal 8-0, and no crew got here inside 15 factors of it. Led by coach Tara VanDerveer, the U.S. featured a deep, versatile crew with Lisa Leslie, who averaged 19.5 ppg, McClain, Sheryl Swoopes and Ruthie Brown. The crew’s 111-87 rout of Brazil within the Gold medal recreation featured 71.9 p.c field-goal taking pictures within the first half. Merely put, the Brazilians didn’t have an opportunity.
As the remainder of the world came upon over the following six Olympiads, neither did anybody else.
TOTAL DOMINANCE
The numbers on the 2000 Olympics had been extraordinarily spectacular. First off, the U.S. was 8-0 within the match and outscored its opposition by 21.7 ppg. Sure, the crew was an offensive juggernaut, defeating groups like New Zealand by 50-plus factors and taking pictures a median 50.8 p.c from the sector, nevertheless it additionally stifled its rivals, holding them to 37.7 p.c success. Leslie and Swoopes once more led the best way, with Yolanda Griffith offering one other sturdy offensive possibility. One of many greatest tales was Teresa Edwards’ determination to step away from worldwide play after setting the report for many factors scored in all competitions by a U.S. participant and taking part in in 5 completely different Olympiads.
When the U.S. crew went to Greece for the ’04 Video games, issues weren’t fairly as simple, however that didn’t imply the Individuals didn’t prevail. Their first six contests didn’t produce an excessive amount of stress, though a 71-58 win over Spain had some moments of concern. Defeating Russia, 66-62, within the semifinals wasn’t simple, and the US discovered itself matched up with Australia within the Gold medal recreation. Nonetheless, due to the crew’s depth and expertise, the U.S. prevailed, 74-63, for its third-straight Olympic Gold.
The story of the crew was Leslie, who led everybody in scoring (15.6 ppg) and rebounding (8.0 rpg). It will be the standout’s third Olympic Video games, and when the competitors was over, she was the all-time U.S. chief in factors, rebounds and blocked photographs in Olympic play.
Though Leslie didn’t play as large a task in 2008 in Beijing, she was nonetheless formidable (10.1 ppg, 7.0 rpg). However Sylvia Fowles, Tina Thompson and Diana Taurasi took the lead because the Individuals put collectively their most dominating efficiency thus far, whipping their eight opponents by a median of 37.6 ppg for the fourth Gold of their seven-Olympiad streak. Even the ultimate towards Australia (once more) wasn’t aggressive, with the US romping, 92-65.
Leslie joined Edwards as the one athlete, male or feminine, to win 4 Olympic basketball Golds.
Gold medal quantity 5 within the string was captured in London, with France offering the opposition within the last recreation. In what was changing into a ritual, the U.S. skunked its rivals by greater than 30 factors a recreation (34.4) and solely had one crew come inside 25 factors. Hen and Taurasi teamed with Tamika Catchings as captains, and all three had been key contributors. Taurasi led the crew with 12.4 ppg, Hen handed out 4.5 apg and Catchings was stout on the boards and the defensive finish. The world could not have appreciated it, however the U.S. was rolling, and there was nothing anybody might do about it.
That was definitely the case in Rio, when the U.S. topped the century mark in six of its eight wins. The ultimate was a 101-72 rout of Spain, and the crew’s common margin of victory was 37.2 ppg. The Taurasi-Catchings-Hen triumvirate once more supplied the mandatory management, however the crew was stuffed with so many stars that it was troublesome to think about a necessity for somebody to be out entrance. Any of the crew members might have—and did—fill that function.
The triumph demonstrated the rising breadth of USA Basketball’s developmental skills. It’s possible {that a} crew of 12 different American gamers might have received Gold, had the squad that tore by means of Rio stayed residence. A sport that didn’t acquire Olympic acceptance till 40 years after the lads’s model debuted had surpassed its male counterpart when it comes to dominance. That shocked some—though it shouldn’t have—the ladies’s skilled recreation has been fairly mature and widespread internationally for many years.
Because the Paris Video games daybreak, it’s clear USA Basketball has perfected the system for achievement within the ladies’s realm. The sport is ripening yearly on the prep, school and WNBA ranges, offering an limitless stream of expertise for the nationwide crew. There’s no assure of Gold within the coming Olympiad—or some other—nevertheless it’s exhausting to think about one other nation with the sources and dedication essential to usurp the U.S.
In different phrases, followers of the U.S. ladies’s crew ought to prepare for one more celebration this summer season.
SLAM PRESENTS USA BASKETBALL IS AVAILABLE NOW
Photographs through Getty Photos.
