Guru's note: First, Kathleen has a nice feature on the summer league beneath this post. Here is another Doug Feinberg report off the Associated Press with the Olympic women. He also filed some funny quotes in an ensuing story after the Guru bolted the office Monday night, which are tacked to the bottom. Also, there's another AP story below on the WNBA getting high marks in diversity. The Guru will provide coverage Wednesday night on quarterfinals play in the summer league.)
By DOUG FEINBERG
AP Sports Writer
SAN FRANCISCO — There was a time when the U.S. women’s basketball team
could simply show up at the Olympics and outscore anyone. Now, winning
another gold medal might hinge on getting one key stop.
“Up until 2004 in Athens we could just outgun our opponents and win on
the offensive end of the floor,” U.S. coach Anne Donovan said Tuesday at
the training camp at Stanford.
“We rarely have had to lock down people and we paid for it in the
World Championships. So the beautiful thing is that these players
understand that. If we don’t talk about it and we don’t do it, we’re going
to make a very difficult road in Beijing,” she said.
That attitude has filtered down to the 12 Olympians. The U.S. roster
boasts four of the top five scorers in the WNBA — led by Diana Taurasi’s
23.9 points — but that can only get them so far as was evident in a 75-68
loss to Russia in the semifinals of the 2006 World Championships.
Seimone Augustus was on that team and understands what this squad
needs to do.
“Everyone knows what I can do on the offensive end, so defense is key
to my role on this team,” said Augustus, fourth in the WNBA with nearly 20
points per game. “We have enough people who can score, I just know when my
number is called that I need to be able to stop someone.”
The loss to Russia underscored the Americans’ weakness in being able
to get key stops down the stretch.
“That still sticks with us as you never want to get beat,” three-time
Olympian Katie Smith said. “It hurt when we got beat down in Brazil. I
think in any type of championship you got to have defense.
“Nine out of 10 games you’re going to shoot the ball well, but one
game something’s going to happen when you’re not shooting well, or someone
is in foul trouble and you’re going to have to rely on your defense,” she
said.
Because these players have not spent a lot of time together on the
court, developing chemistry on the defensive end was going to be
important.
“The biggest thing about playing defense is being able to trust your
teammates,” said Tamika Catchings, who is one of the Americans’ best
individual defenders. “We can’t just play people 1-on-1, we need to know
that if you do get beat there is someone behind you to step up and help.”
On the second day of training, the U.S. focused mostly on the defense,
doing drill after drill that helps build the necessary trust and defensive
rotations.
“We knew today was going to be all about defense and we had to get a
good night’s sleep,” veteran forward DeLisha Milton-Jones said.
Facing a bunch of male practice players, the team ran through a
certain scenario — they simulated a late-game situation in which they
trailed by three points.
Twice the U.S. rallied to victory — one time on Tina Thompson’s
bank-shot with 3.4 seconds left. But the U.S. also came up short twice,
falling on a defensive miscue.
“It’s a work in progress and the chemistry is developing,” Donovan
said. “Our goal is to get better every day and be ready on Aug. 9.”
WNBA Combatants Become Teammates
With four members of the team involved in last week’s brawl in the
WNBA, tensions could have been high when the team started practice Monday
night at Stanford University. Instead, it helped bring everyone together
as they were all kidding about it.
In one of the drills, Sylvia Fowles accidentally got poked in the eye
by Katie Smith and Diana Taurasi joked that it should be a one-game
suspension. Smith retorted how in Detroit it would probably get four. The
whole team laughed.
“We all like each other,” Taurasi said. “It’s one thing to go on a
team where everybody hates each other and you go, ’I gotta go with these
people.’ But we all like each other. We’ve played with and against each
other for the last 8 or 10 years, so we’re very familiar with each other,
which is a nice feeling.”
WNBA Scores in Diversity
By TRAVIS REED
Associated Press Writer
ORLANDO, Fla. — The WNBA has received the first A-plus given in
Richard Lapchick’s annual diversity report card on race and gender.
The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport study, which grades
professional leagues on the number of participating women and minorities,
shows women own three WNBA teams, up two from 2007 and one the previous
year.
The number of minority head coaches and players increased, but there
was a slight decrease in women and minority assistant coaches.
Lapchick, director of the University of Central Florida institute,
said the WNBA has long led the way in his studies and benefited from its
relative youth. The league began play in 1997.
“They started at the same time the (NBA) began its diversity
initiative, so the WNBA was able to include a good pool of candidates from
the very beginning,” Lapchick said.
The WNBA said it had no comment on the study.
Carla Christofferson and Katherine Goodman own the Los Angeles Sparks,
Colleen J. Maloof and Adrienne Maloof-Nassif own the Sacramento Monarchs,
and the Seattle Storm’s owners are Anne Levinson, Ginny Gilder, Dawn
Trudeau and Lisa Brummel.
There are now as many teams with women holding a partial or full stake
in a WNBA team as there are in the NFL and more than in any other sport.
Women own all or part of the St. Louis Rams, San Francisco 49ers and
Jacksonville Jaguars in the NFL and the Sacramento Kings and Washington
Wizards of the NBA. Major League Baseball has no female majority
ownership.
Of the WNBA’s 14 teams, five had female head coaches: Linn Dunn of the
Indiana Fever, Pat Coyle of the New York Liberty, Jenny Boucek of the
Sacramento Monarchs, the Houston Comets’ Karleen Thompson and the Atlanta
Dream’s Marynell Meadors.
Five head coaches were black: Thompson, Michael Cooper of the Los
Angeles Sparks, the Chicago Sky’s Steven Key, Corey Gaines of the Phoenix
Mercury and Tree Rollins, who was recently fired by the Washington
Mystics.
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