The USA won its eighth straight women’s basketball gold medal at the Summer Olympics. The continuation of the dominance of the Americans in women’s basketball is earning all-time
The United States women’s basketball team can call themselves the most dominant team in Olympic history. That’s because they’re the first to win eight straight gold medals in the Olympics.
That is no small feat. The USA has won only gold at the Olympics in women’s basketball since 1996. Four years earlier, the United States lost to the former Soviet Union team in their semifinal match. They beat Cuba in the bronze medal match, igniting a series of wins that hasn’t stopped.
The team’s gold-medal victory over France was ignited in the fourth quarter by a late-game MVP performance by Kahleah Copper.
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It was Copper’s first Olympic gold medal. Yet she won the WNBA Championship in 2021 with the Phoenix Mercury, when she was the WNBA Finals MVP. She’s also a four-time WNBA All-Star.
A’ja Wilson contributed 21 points and 12 rebounds. If an MVP award were given out for the gold-medal match, Wilson would earn it.
Yet when Wilson was asked by a reporter from NBC to sum up Copper’s contribution to the team’s win in the gold-medal match, Wilson was both colorful and present.
“That bitch,” Wilson said, simply walking away in a mic-drop moment.
WNBA player Natasha Cloud summed it up:
In Kahleah we trust.
— Natasha Cloud (@T_Cloud4) August 11, 2024
USA head coach Cheryl Reeve was a bit more diplomatic.
“What a tremendous basketball game,” Reeve said after the game. “We feel fortunate and happy. It’s a lot of trust that has to happen. I thrilled we were able to get it done.”
Now both Reeve and Miller are out LGBTQ coaches and staff to earn an Olympic gold medal in Paris.
More than half of the players on the team are also publicly out as LGBTQ: Breanna Stewart, Diana Taurasi, Alyssa Thomas, Brittney Griner, Jewell Loyd, Chelsea Gray and Copper.
