“There were a couple players that we said we’re going to need to be able to beat France,” coach Cheryl Reeve said. “And Kahleah Copper was a player that we said we’d need for France.”
Copper, also a force in the second half as the U.S. fought to stay atop the see-sawing score, finished with 12 points, five rebounds, two assists, and two steals.
“I think the gold medal is the standard,” Alyssa Thomas said. “No matter where we are in the world, it’s our goal and that’s what we came here for.”
Diana Taurasi has met that standard a record sixth time. Her first gold medal came at the Olympic Games Athens 2004, and she’s hit the gold standard in every Olympic Games since then, including the Olympic Games Paris 2024. She’s just the third Olympian all-time to earn six or more gold medals in the same event, and the first American to accomplish the feat.
Brittney Griner didn’t know if she’d ever play basketball again after being in a Russian prison. She was thrust into a swell of anxiety as the team rode a train from Lille, where pool play games were held, to Paris.
“I hadn’t been on the train since I was on the prison train, and there was a little moment of anxiety and just kind of reliving it for a second,” Griner said. “I had a little moment, and I just focused back in, all the little things that I learned from counseling, just grounding myself, and it’s been good ever since.”
Now, just 20 months after returning to the United States, Griner is a three-time gold medalist who was in tears after receiving the latest one.
“It means so much to me, to my family, to be here,” Griner said. “My country fought so hard for me to be standing here so, yeah, this gold medal is going to hold a special place in my heart.”
The U.S. women carry the winning tradition out of these Olympic Games – along with the 61-game win streak that dates back to 1992 – but the global reach of basketball didn’t make it easy. The U.S. women’s basketball squad will continue to be a team that draws on the unique strengths of its individual players to win championships.
“They don’t care who gets the credit,” Reeve said. “They just want to win. And that’s when we said that we could reach our greatest heights, if we could be that, and we’ve done that. So I’m really proud of us for that.”
Madie Chandler is writing for Team USA as a graduate student in the Sports Capital Journalism Program at Indiana University Indianapolis.
