Picture by 2022 Getty Images
USA Basketball announced the women’s team headed to Paris 2024, and the roster includes soon-to-be six-time Olympian Diana Taurasi, two-time WNBA MVPs A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart, and two-time Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner. These women will try to win an unprecedented eighth gold medal in a row, with a streak reaching back the Olympic Games Atlanta 1996.
Taurasi, Wilson, Stewart and Griner will be joined by Alyssa Thomas, Napheesa Collier, Jewell Loyd, Kelsey Plum, Jackie Young, Sabrina Ionescu, Chelsea Gray and Kahleah Copper. It's a credentialed and experienced team with plenty of international basketball experience. Only Ionescu, Thomas and Copper are making their Olympic debuts, and all three played on the 2022 FIBA World Cup team that won gold.
The team will be coached by Cheryl Reeve, who has won four WNBA championships with the Minneosta Lynx. She will be assisted by Duke coach Kara Lawson, who won gold playing for Team USA at the Olympic Games Beijing 2008; Texas A&M coach Joni Taylor, and Washington Mystics general manager and past coach Mike Thibault.
As National Olympic Committees have the exclusive authority for the representation of their respective countries at the Olympic Games, athletes' participation at the Paris Games depends on their NOC selecting them to represent their delegation at Paris 2024.
Taurasi, the WNBA’s all-time scoring leader, is still playing at a high level. She will be 42 years old for the Olympics, and already has five Olympic gold medals. If the U.S. wins any medal in Paris, Taurasi will become the most-decorated team sport athlete in Olympic history. In an interview with NBC after she won gold in Tokyo, Taurasi quipped, “See you in Paris!” Her longtime teammate and friend Sue Bird laughed, but Taurasi clearly was not joking. We will see her in Paris.
Two of her teammates will be the women who won four of the last five MVP honors for the WNBA. Stewart will be a three-time Olympian. She won her first gold in 2016, just a few months after graduating from UConn. She went on to win the WNBA MVP in 2018 in 2023.
Wilson won her first Olympic gold medal at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, and won back-to-back MVPs in 2022 and 2023. She is one of four members of two-time WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces who will represent the U.S. Gray won gold with Wilson in Tokyo, and Plum and Young, who won gold with the U.S. 3x3 team in Tokyo.
This will be Griner's first time playing in international competition since her harrowing ordeal in a Russian prison. After she was released, she said she didn't want to leave the U.S. except for the Olympics.
“And I wouldn’t be afraid to travel abroad. I [know] the same country that brought me home would protect its Olympic athletes," she said in her memoir, "Coming Home."
Competition for the U.S. starts July 29 with a group game against Japan, who won silver in Tokyo. On August 1, the American team will take on Belgium, who gave the U.S. a memorable game at the Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Antwerp in February. Team USA will finish group play against Germany on August 4.
Related content