The plan was not to write about the U.S. women again, because what could you really say that hasn’t already been said?
They won their sixth straight Olympic gold medal Saturday, taking apart Spain 101-72, with 11 of the 12 players on the roster scoring. Spain is the third-ranked team in the world.
That came after the U.S. team beat France by 19 in the semis. France is the fourth-ranked team in the world.
The only reason the U.S. team didn’t dispatch Australia, the second-ranked team in the world, was because the Aussies, unbeaten in Group A while the Americans went unbeaten in Group B, lost to Serbia in the quarterfinals. (The U.S. women had throttled Australia in a pre-Olympic exhibition, to boot.) They averaged 109 points per game, and won by an average of 37.3 points per game.
So that’s 49 straight Olympic wins for the U.S. team, dating back to a semifinal loss to the Unified Team in Barcelona in 1992, six straight Olympics and four of the last five World Cups/World Championships, a streak of 89-1 for the senior team the last 20 years. The one loss was a 75-68 semifinals loss to Russia in the 2006 World Championships. They are 66-3 in the Olympics since women’s basketball was introduced as a sport in the Summer Games in 1976. Coach Geno Auriemma is now 31-0 in the Olympics and World Cup since taking over in 2009.
Yet daily excellence grabs you by the scruff and demands your attention. You revel in its presence. You know that you are watching the standard by which others are judged. No one went to a Ray Charles concert in the ’50s and ’60s and thought to themselves, ‘please, Dear God, don’t play ‘What’d I Say.’ No one watching young Steffi Graf wallop from the baseline in Mannheim, West Germany in the early ’80s said ‘Ach, dass Vorhand ist so langweilig.’
The blend of emerging talents (like Britney Griner and Elena Delle Donne) with young vets (like Maya Moore and Lindsay Whalen) and old heads (like Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird and Tamika Catchings) was the last 15 years of women’s basketball in the States, on one team. (No, Candace Parker was not here, though she certainly deserved to be here.)
“This isn’t our sixth win in a row; this is our first win in a row, this particular team,” Auriemma said Saturday night. “And so we celebrated like it was the first time that we’ve done it. But for people in USA Basketball, we’re really proud of the fact that we’ve been able to establish that incredible legacy of winning. It’s something I’ll never forget. These 28 days have been maybe the most remarkable 28 days of my life, with these people. This is a perfect team. In so many ways, it’s a perfect team. And it was a pleasure to coach them.”
Awe is a wonderful trait. It shouldn’t be shuttered or denied. It is right to be in awe of some things, and some people, for they show the absolute pinnacle of what is possible in the human experience. How good can you be, if you push your heart and mind and body to their absolute maximum? Look at her. Look at them.
You should be in awe of this team.
They are full of WNBA champions and WNBA MVPs. They are in the middle of their WNBA seasons, “all banged up,” Atlanta Dream guard Angel McCoughtry said. Yet they came here and played their best, seeming even more competitive here than during their WNBA seasons.
“It’s a little different when you’re on this team,” said Moore, who added a second gold Saturday to her three WNBA titles. “It’s almost weird. You have pressure because you want to do your job and you want to represent well. But you also have, like, this higher level of confidence, because you know you’re surrounded by greatness. So it’s this weird balance of prepare, but this is fun. You can’t go wrong if you just play. Not every time you’re on a WNBA court can you say that.”
The standard does not have to be articulated. It’s just there. The players that these women watched growing up, like Teresa Edwards, Lisa Leslie and Dawn Staley — and Taurasi, who won her fourth gold Saturday, along with Bird and Catchings — still resonate with the next generation. They started, and sustained, the WNBA. They’re the genesis of this current run. No one coming behind them wants to be the weak link.
Taurasi, as ever, was the North Star. Delle Donne idolized her growing up in Delaware.
“I, for sure, did not want to be the first one not to get that gold medal,” Delle Donne said. “But that was never the focus, which was why these older players were so great. It was always this team. Nothing about the past. What they’ve achieved, never can be taken away from them. And what this team has achieved is what this team has achieved together. That was always the focus and what so great about the older players, just bringing us along the way as quickly as they could.”
This team could grind inside, with Tina Charles and Sylvia Fowles. It had the midrange game with Seimone Augustus — whose jumper is as pure as any you’ll ever see. Taurasi (who shot 57 percent on 3-pointers in the tournament) and Moore fired away from deep. Bird injured her knee against China, but the Minnesota Lynx’s Lindsay Whalen came in and was rock-solid running the offense, including scoring 17 points against Spain Saturday.
Afterward, there were tears, for different reasons. Augustus wept for her hometown of Baton Rouge, besieged by epic floods as so much of Louisiana is. More than 40,000 homes have been destroyed by the flood waters. Yet friends and family found the buildings that are still standing to watch her play Saturday.
“You talk about the ’96 team, to now — Dawn Staley is our (assistant) coach, and she’s kind of feeding us the history and the knowledge that we’re going to pass along to the next generation of players,” Augustus said. “That’s something that we want to happen. We all want the women’s game to grow, and this is a part of it. So as long as we keep dominating, and we keep performing the way we are, we’re going to continue to get better.”
And Auriemma, the wisecracking, loud-talking, brash coach, who’s gotten in feuds and fights with just about everyone of consequence in his line of work over the years at UConn, let it go as he embraced Taurasi following the win over Spain.
“I saw those tears!,” Moore said. “He’s a grandpa now. Can’t hold ’em back.”
Auriemma said he was thinking about all the people with USA Basketball whose lives revolve around the successful navigation of these tournaments when he started crying.
“It probably happened when Diana and I were just sharing a moment,” he said. “And I realized that from the time she was 17 to today, she and I have been through a lot of games and a lot of championships. And I said something to the effect that, I wouldn’t be here without you. And I really meant that.
“But the overriding emotion that comes from all of this is, these players are going back to their teams. And if they don’t win a championship this year, they start up again next May. And if they don’t win one next year, they start up again the following May. When you do USA Basketball … Tuesday or Wednesday, the people in this room, they go home and they start planning for Tokyo. And their whole life revolves around tonight. And you’re responsible for bringing that home. That, to me, is the biggest pressure that I feel. Not to beat the other teams. I feel the pressure not to let them down.”
The future lays out like a road map to further domination. All the talk all week was how Griner and Delle Donne had barely scratched the surface of what they’d ultimately become, that their best days were far in front of them. Breanna Stewart, the four-time Final Four Most Outstanding Player and solid rookie for the Seattle Storm, barely got on the court in Rio. Moore, McCoughtry and Charles could all easily go through another four-year cycle. Certainly Parker, just 30, would likely still be capable in four years in Tokyo.
But the heartbeat of the last decade plus for USA Basketball — Taurasi, Bird and Catchings — will be gone.
“I told Diana that she can’t leave until I’m done playing ball,” the 25-year-old Griner said. “But nobody’s really talked about that, as far as who takes over when they leave or anything like that. Tonight, (we’re) just living in this moment, winning the gold. I know that when they do decide to stop playing, stop coming back to USA ball, there’s a lot of ladies here that are ready. Somebody talked about pressure. I look at it like you don’t want to let down the ones that came and have set the bar. So instead of looking at it as pressure, who’s going to take over, we look at it as, we have to keep this legacy alive. We don’t want to let down the ones who sacrificed so much for USA Basketball.”
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Longtime NBA reporter and columnist David Aldridge is an analyst for TNT. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter.
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