There was nobody close to Team USA women's basketball. They won their average game by 37 points, with a "scare" coming in a semifinal matchup against France that they only won by 19. They rampaged through the competition to their sixth consecutive gold medal, extending their Olympic win streak to a preposterous 49 games.
It’s hard to find a storyline in dominance besides dominance, but I noticed something strange about Team USA: They kept lying to me. They kept saying things any rational person would know was false, in an attempt to make it seem as if the competition was close. I don’t know whether they believed the things they were saying, or whether they were just following the party line.
But they kept lying, and I think these lies helped fuel their unparalleled brilliance.
"Our starting five is not that much different than everybody else’s starting five." -- Geno Auriemma
Auriemma was trying to make a point about Team USA’s depth being its strength, and to be fair, that’s true. The 12th-best player on America’s 12-woman roster would be the best player on any other team in the world. Honestly, America could probably send its 13th-through-24th best women’s basketball players.
But this is a lie. Team USA’s starting five was completely, 100 percent different from anybody else’s starting five. They started Brittney Griner and Tina Charles, two centers who could dominate the world by themselves if they wanted to. They started Diana Taurasi, who hasn’t been shooting that well in the WNBA, but led the tournament by hitting 57 percent of her shots from deep. They started Maya Moore, who is good at literally everything, and Sue Bird, who facilitated the team’s offense.
Auriemma told his team the rest of the world was on par with America’s starting five to keep them motivated -- he needed Elena Delle Donne to be Elena Delle Donne; he needed Lindsay Whalen to be Lindsay Whalen -- but that starting five was miles better than the rest of the world’s, and that’s worth pointing out.
"It’s probably going to take a while for us to start clicking." — Sylvia Fowles
While the men’s basketball team had weeks of training time to gel, the women’s squad had just a few days. The WNBA started its midseason Olympics break on July 23, less than two weeks before the team’s opening game against Senegal. The team would often mention the fact that they were thrown in together.
But this was a lie. America’s players instantly acquired chemistry, as was evident by the sheer happiness each player displayed when presented with the opportunity to work with their world-class teammates.
They played together. These players are used to carrying the majority of basketball responsibility on their club teams in the WNBA and Europe. They seemed to greatly enjoy the fact that they were playing alongside 11 players of equal, if not greater, talent.
Each player seemed fascinated by the basketball possibilities presented by such an immense combination of basketball talent. No, they hadn’t spent months together perfecting everything, but that seemed to be part of the joy of it. Each play was a thrilling exploration of just how dominant the five players on the court at any given time could be.
Fowles was lying when she said the team needed to work on its togetherness. But that lie fed the team’s need to attempt every spectacular basketball thing possible.
"We need to work on our rebounding" — [paraphrase, multiple players, after playing Spain]
Oh my goodness, this was such a big fat lie, and I heard it from almost everybody. I watched Team USA beat Spain — hypothetically the second-best team in the world, the team they played in the 2014 World Championship final and would go on to play in the gold medal game. They won by 40. The final was 103-63.
But when asked about the game, none of the players were satisfied, and specifically the bigs pointed to their performance on the boards.
They out-rebounded Spain, 46-32. Some of that was stoked by the fact that Spain simply missed more shots, but even by rebounding percentage, Team USA dominated the glass. They had 16 offensive rebounds on 34 missed shots, meaning they grabbed almost half of the small amount of shots they missed.
Team USA was the best in the world, but they were always seeking better. They searched for flaws in themselves, even when there were none. They lied to push themselves -- and that’s how greatness happened.
And now one truth:
"Everything’s become, ‘of course they’re supposed to win,’ and I think that really misses the point of what it takes to get to that level all the time." — Geno Auriemma
But we don’t really make a big deal out of the dominance of our women’s basketball team. We just expect them to win, and we barely register applause when they do.
There is not a whole ton of difference between our men’s basketball team and our women’s basketball team, except that the men’s team actually loses once a decade or so. But every four years, we come up with a new neat nickname to capture the essence of why this individual American men’s team was uniquely interesting — and we view the women’s teams as an amorphous blob of victory.
This women’s basketball team is one of our greatest sports treasures. They are unbeatable. They are more than unbeatable, really — they’re not even approachable. And they achieve that near-perfection with immense joy and national pride.
Celebrate them, please.
* * *