PARIS – In a small, fluorescent-lit gymnasium north of Paris, U.S. coach Cheryl Reeve was asked about her team’s biggest strength at the Olympics.
Depth, she paused. No, size.
“1A, 1B,” she decided.
Reeve was right. With three players taller than 6-4 and a bevy of guards in the 6-foot range, the U.S. will have a one to five height and height advantage over nearly every opponent taking the floor at this Olympics. When it comes to depth, while other countries have continued to build talented rosters over the years that may be able to compete with Team USA’s starting five for a long time, when Reeve rolls out her lineup, opponents really The blow came. It must feel like this, Oh, do you think these five WNBA All-Stars are difficult to defend? Well, how about you try five more? And then, for good measure, the other two?
Team USA also features two of the best players in the world in Aja Wilson and Brianna Stewart, the most experienced Olympian in Diana Taurasi, and the two-time defending WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces. Four members (including Wilson).
So, yes, as usual, Team USA has quite a few advantages going into these Olympics, and that’s even before mentioning the legacy this team left in these games.
Because no dynasty is as dominant in sports right now as American women’s basketball. In seven consecutive Olympics, the women’s team has won gold, building expectations (and assumptions) with each successive victory.
Team USA has not lost an Olympic game (including pool play) since the 1992 Games in Barcelona, Spain. The closest game in Olympic competition since the 1996 Olympics – the start of a gold-medal streak – was a four-point win over Russia in 2004, but such close games are rare. Only three times in the past seven Olympics have opponents held their losses to single digits.
So it’s not just a metaphor to say that this U.S. women’s basketball team knows nothing but Olympic gold medals. For most people on this list, this is true. The last time the U.S. women’s team lost an Olympic game, on August 5, 1992, only three players on the roster were still alive (Alyssa Thomas was just 4 months old at the time).
Yet despite these advantages — both historically and in this particular moment — Reeve is all too aware of the drawbacks that come with a country filled with women’s basketball talent.
Because of the depth of Team USA’s roster, and not just the final 12 players making the Olympic roster, the rotation is more significant than other countries during the four-year cycle between Olympics. When the roster was announced in June, those 12 players never actually attended training camp together. When it came to the All-Star break earlier this month, the 12-man squad had only held two full-squad practices. This reduced preparation time affects chemistry (which was evident when they lost in the WNBA All-Star Game).
“Talent is not going to be the reason we win,” Cheryl Reeve said of Team USA. “It’s going to be the chemistry of our talent.” (Gregory Shams/Getty Images)
But Reeve knew this would be one of the team’s toughest challenges. Reeve is making her debut as Team USA coach in 2022, and she asks the obvious question to her team. They will play against teams that know each other better, have played more together and trained together more, but they must not use this as an excuse not to find a good way to work together.
“Talent is not going to be the reason we win,” Reeve said. “It’s going to be the chemistry of our talent. We have to work on it and focus on it.
The team has come a long way between the All-Star break and last week’s friendly against Germany. Defensively (Reeve’s calling card), the team looked more united. Reeve, who also coaches the Minnesota Lynx, draws on her experience in the WNBA this season, when the Bobcats returned just five players but had one of the league’s most impressive two-week preseason games. One of the first half.
Team USA knows that within its own teams — Japan, Belgium and Germany — the players on those teams have gotten more reps together as a team, not just in the last Olympic cycle, but with some core players together. Played for many, many years. But with talent, depth and all the rest, Team USA is heading in its own direction, and the team hopes to use every minute on the court to accelerate its cohesiveness and let its strengths overshadow any shortcomings it may have from a lack of time together. .
Because there are still 13 days until Team USA’s opener against Japan on Monday and they plan to take the event to the podium with their eighth consecutive gold medal, the seven teams ahead of them have made their expectations very clear.
Reeve has made sure the team tries to separate the legacy of Team USA’s 55-game Olympic win streak from what the team hopes to do over the next two weeks, but make no mistake: As the program has done for the past three decades, Goals and expectations are one and the same. This is gold and nothing more. A huge victory, that’s all. This is the Team USA way, nothing more.
(Above: Dan Goldfarb / Competitor; Juan Ocampo/NBAE/Getty Images; Ryan Stetz/NBAE/Getty Images)
