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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 probably the most 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 over the entire world, an argument might be made that the U.S. Girls’s Nationwide Crew is probably 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 outstanding 55 video games. There have been no hiccups or off nights. The staff has operated as a thresher, ripping via 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 very best of the very best.”
That makes Sue Hen and Diana Taurasi the very best of the very best of the very best. They captured their fifth Gold medals in Tokyo and supplied the sort of veteran management that has been a trademark of the ladies’s staff in the course of the streak. Sylvia Fowles earned her fourth Gold with the victory. Out of the three, solely Taurasi is enjoying on this yr’s Video games.
“There may be an final honor and satisfaction with carrying this jersey,” mentioned Taurasi. “I hope the subsequent technology feels that very same satisfaction, that very same respect, that very same duty to ensure to return out right here and play the best means. There’s nothing prefer it. There’s nothing like enjoying within the Olympics…Once you put that USA in your chest, you’re enjoying for everybody who loves basketball in our nation, and that duty that weighs heavy on us. That’s most likely one factor we received’t miss.”
Though ladies’s basketball didn’t grow to be an Olympic sport till 1976, the connection between USA Basketball and the nation’s prime 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 necessary—and extremely profitable—a part of USA Basketball, and the continued success and domination of U.S. groups exhibits 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 greatest 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 objective has grow to be 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 girls’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 staff was made from seven members of the Nashville Enterprise Faculty staff, one future member and one other participant, and it dumped the host Chile staff, 49-36, within the ultimate. 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 ultimate recreation clinched the Gold.
That might be the U.S. staff’s final victory over the united states for a very long time. The Soviets received the subsequent 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 united states ripped the U.S. staff, 112-77, within the group stage. Quite a lot of circumstances stored the groups aside after that. The united states 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.
America 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 consequence was a crushing, 84-82 American loss within the Gold medal recreation.
However that was it for any stage of American disappointment. Large issues have been forward, and the U.S. ladies have been about to indicate the world how the game was performed.
STEPPING FORWARD
When the U.S. staff arrived in Montreal in ’76 for the first-ever Olympics to incorporate a ladies’s competitors, they discovered a two-bedroom condominium 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 gifted U.S. staff that received Gold featured standouts like Cheryl Miller and Lynette Woodard and was coached by the legendary Pat Summitt. Whereas the united states’s absence led many to debate whether or not the Individuals might have defeated their primary 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 staff and made the Individuals virtually invincible. That wasn’t the case 4 years later, in Barcelona. Whereas the boys’s Dream Crew stomped its method to Gold, the ladies might solely handle a Bronze, because of a semifinal loss to the Unified Crew, as the previous Soviet Union was then recognized. That might be the final time the ladies’s staff would stand on one thing aside from the highest stage of the podium. Starting in Atlanta, the U.S. turned unstoppable.
The ’96 ladies’s staff was an ideal 8-0, and no staff got here inside 15 factors of it. Led by coach Tara VanDerveer, the U.S. featured a deep, versatile staff with Lisa Leslie, who averaged 19.5 ppg, McClain, Sheryl Swoopes and Ruthie Brown. The staff’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 discovered over the subsequent six Olympiads, neither did anybody else.
TOTAL DOMINANCE
The numbers on the 2000 Olympics have been extraordinarily spectacular. First off, the U.S. was 8-0 within the match and outscored its opposition by 21.7 ppg. Sure, the staff 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, but it surely 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’ resolution to step away from worldwide play after setting the report for many factors scored in all competitions by a U.S. participant and enjoying in 5 totally different Olympiads.
When the U.S. staff went to Greece for the ’04 Video games, issues weren’t fairly as straightforward, 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 straightforward, and america discovered itself matched up with Australia within the Gold medal recreation. Nonetheless, because of the staff’s depth and expertise, the U.S. prevailed, 74-63, for its third-straight Olympic Gold.
The story of the staff was Leslie, who led everybody in scoring (15.6 ppg) and rebounding (8.0 rpg). It might 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 pictures in Olympic play.
Though Leslie didn’t play as huge 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 to this point, whipping their eight opponents by a median of 37.6 ppg for the fourth Gold of their seven-Olympiad streak. Even the ultimate in opposition to Australia (once more) wasn’t aggressive, with america 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 ultimate recreation. In what was turning into a ritual, the U.S. skunked its rivals by greater than 30 factors a recreation (34.4) and solely had one staff come inside 25 factors. Hen and Taurasi teamed with Tamika Catchings as captains, and all three have been key contributors. Taurasi led the staff with 12.4 ppg, Hen handed out 4.5 apg and Catchings was stout on the boards and the defensive finish. The world might not have appreciated it, however the U.S. was rolling, and there was nothing anybody might do about it.
That was actually 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 staff’s common margin of victory was 37.2 ppg. The Taurasi-Catchings-Hen triumvirate once more supplied the mandatory management, however the staff was crammed with so many stars that it was troublesome to think about a necessity for somebody to be out entrance. Any of the staff members might have—and did—fill that function.
The triumph demonstrated the rising breadth of USA Basketball’s developmental skills. It’s probably {that a} staff of 12 different American gamers might have received Gold, had the squad that tore via Rio stayed residence. A sport that didn’t acquire Olympic acceptance till 40 years after the boys’s model debuted had surpassed its male counterpart by way of 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 staff. There’s no assure of Gold within the coming Olympiad—or every other—but it surely’s onerous 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 staff ought to prepare for an additional celebration this summer season.
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