PARIS — From a small, fluorescent lit gymnasium simply north of Paris, Crew USA coach Cheryl Reeve was requested about her group’s largest benefit within the Olympics.
Depth, she paused. No, measurement.
“1A, 1B,” she determined.
Reeve isn’t mistaken. With three gamers taller than 6-4 and a bevy of guards within the 6-foot vary, Crew USA may have a top and size benefit, one by way of 5, on practically each opponent that takes the ground throughout these Olympic Video games. And on the subject of depth, although different international locations have continued to construct gifted rosters through the years, which could be capable to compete nicely for an prolonged time with the States’ beginning 5, the true intestine punch for opponents comes when Reeve rolls out her backups and rotational gamers, for whom no opponents’ six by way of 10 can maintain tempo. It should really feel one thing like, Oh, you thought these 5 WNBA All-Stars had been powerful to protect? Properly, how about you strive 5 extra? After which, for good measure, one other two?
There’s additionally the very fact the Individuals have the 2 finest gamers on this planet, A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart, probably the most skilled Olympian, Diana Taurasi, and 4 members of the two-time defending WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces (together with Wilson).
So, sure, per typical, Crew USA has quite a lot of benefits in these Olympic Video games even earlier than mentioning the legacy this group carries into these video games.
As a result of there’s no dynasty as dominant in sports activities now because the U.S. girls in worldwide basketball. For seven consecutive Olympics, the ladies have introduced dwelling the gold, constructing the expectation (and, assumption) with every consecutive win.
Crew USA hasn’t misplaced a single Olympic recreation (together with pool play) for the reason that 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. The closest recreation in Olympic play since these 1996 Video games — the beginning of the gold medal streak — was a 4-point win over Russia in 2004, however these shut video games are uncommon. Simply thrice within the final seven Olympics have opponents stored their losses to single digits.
So, to say that this Crew USA girls’s basketball group doesn’t know something besides Olympic gold medals isn’t only a determine of speech. For almost all of this roster, it’s factually true. Simply three gamers on the roster had been alive the final time a Crew USA girls’s group misplaced an Olympic recreation — Aug. 5, 1992 (and, Alyssa Thomas was barely 4 months outdated on the time).
And but, with all these benefits — each traditionally and on this particular second — Reeve is hyperaware of the drawbacks that include a rustic this full of girls’s basketball expertise.
Due to the depth Crew USA has in its participant pool, and never simply with the ultimate 12 gamers who made the Olympic roster, the personnel rotates extra considerably all through the four-year cycles between Olympics than in different international locations. When the group’s roster was introduced in June, the total 12 had by no means truly been in a camp collectively earlier than. And once they took the ground within the All-Star Recreation earlier this month, the 12 had solely had two practices with the total complement of gamers. That sort of truncated prep time impacts chemistry (which was fairly clear throughout their loss to the WNBA All-Stars).
“Expertise is just not going to be the explanation why we win,” Cheryl Reeve says of Crew USA. “It’s going to be the chemistry of our expertise.” (Gregory Shamus / Getty Pictures)
However Reeve knew that might be one of many hardest challenges of this group. In her first on-floor look as Crew USA’s coach in 2022, Reeve addressed the plain together with her group. They might play groups who knew each other higher, who had performed collectively extra, who had practiced collectively extra, however they may by no means use that as an excuse for his or her not discovering a technique to play nicely collectively.
“Expertise is just not going to be the explanation why we win,” Reeve stated. “It’s going to be the chemistry of our expertise. And we now have to work exhausting at that and concentrate on that.”
Between the All-Star Recreation and Crew USA’s pleasant in opposition to Germany final week, the group made strides. Defensively (Reeve’s calling card), the group regarded extra collectively. Reeve, who additionally coaches the Minnesota Lynx, leaned on her WNBA expertise from this season, when the Lynx, returning simply 5 gamers, managed to jell nicely sufficient in the course of the league’s two-week preseason to place collectively one of the vital spectacular first halves to the WNBA season with a win within the league-wide Commissioner’s Cup in June.
Crew USA is aware of that in its personal pool — Japan, Belgium and Germany — the gamers on these groups have gotten extra reps collectively as groups, not simply on this final Olympic cycle but additionally with some cores enjoying collectively for a lot of, a few years. However with the expertise, depth and each different benefit Crew USA has going its manner, the group hopes to make use of each minute on the ground collectively to speed up its jelling and permit its benefits to overshadow no matter drawbacks would possibly exist from its lack of time collectively.
As a result of 13 days from Crew USA’s opener in opposition to Japan on Monday, they plan to be on the rostrum with this system’s eighth consecutive gold medal, holding up the expectation that the seven groups forward of them made completely clear.
Reeve has made positive this group tries to separate the legacy of Crew USA’s 55 consecutive Olympic wins from what this group hopes to do over the subsequent two weeks, however make no mistake about it: Simply as this program has over the past three a long time, the purpose and the expectation is one and the identical. It’s gold, and nothing much less. Massive wins, and nothing much less. It’s the Crew USA manner, and nothing much less.
(Prime illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Juan Ocampo / NBAE / Getty Pictures; Ryan Stetz / NBAE / Getty Pictures)
