There must have been a real sense of accomplishment winning the Gold Medal, especially given the stakes.
“Although it’s a great accomplishment, I feel a sense of relief more than anything else that now we can concentrate on training for the Olympics themselves instead of worrying about getting there. Now we have to do the things necessary to be a good team once we get there. Up until now we’ve been worried about doing what we need to do to get there, so it’s a much better mindset at the moment.”
As is the case with men’s basketball, it seems clear the rest of the world is catching up with the United States in women’s basketball.
“Well it certainly has caught up in a couple of countries in our zone. I think that Cuba and Brazil for sure and Canada, who is improving, have proven to be top-notch teams. Cuba has put themselves in the ranks of maybe the top eight teams in the world right now, so playing them was a challenge. You could probably easily say that there are seven or eight players on the Cuban team who could play in the WNBA, and many of them could start for their teams right now. Brazil already has some of those kinds of players. We’ve seen what Australia and Russia have done over the last eight years, and teams in Europe are catching up. It’s getting much more competitive every year.”
Was there any country that particularly impressed or surprised you?
“I don’t think anybody surprised me, other than how much Cuba had gotten more disciplined as a team over the last year. We played them in the world championships and you could see that they were getting better, but they weren’t as cohesive as they are now. I think the surprise might be in how Brazil was able to maintain a high level of excellence despite the youth movement in their program. Their young core of players will serve them well over the next year or so.”
With an abundance of young players on the United States team, how do you think that has impacted the program?
“Well, our national team program is in a serious transition from a veteran-laden team to a much younger team, and so we need the veterans that are still there to be great leaders. I thought Tina Thompson in particular was great down there. She took on some defensive challenges that maybe had not been asked of her before. We hope to have Lisa Leslie be part of the group still, so she would be another experienced veteran. It’s a tough transition when you go through what we’re going through and handing over the team to a group of talented but, on the international stage, an inexperienced group. Diana (Taurasi) and Sue (Bird) and all those players are really, really good players, but they haven’t had the pressure of the US National Team on their shoulders right now. I think this was a good experience for them to start taking on those leadership roles.
The final roster for the Olympic team still seems to be unsettled.
We’re still pretty unsure what our final roster will look like next summer. We’ve got a lot of players that are in the pool of players being considered for this that were not there (in Chile), mainly due to injuries. Between Lisa Leslie, Sheryl Swoops, Tamika Catchings, Asjha Jones, Taj McWilliams-Franklin, Katie Douglas, Alana Beard, all those people were injured and unavailable. We have a lot of work to do and that’s why the next few training sessions coming up are so important to try to see how different players fit in, who plays together well and who fits certain roles that we’ll need against the teams we will play against in Beijing.”
You’ve been an assistant coach before, of course, but what’s it been like to go back to handling the duties of an assistant after five years as a WNBA head coach?
“It was fine. I enjoyed it. You go back to doing more of the daily scouting and preparation, game film, those kinds of things. There are a couple of advantages, I think. It makes me appreciate my own assistants more, because sometimes you forget as a head coach what that involves. I’ve done so many years on the NBA, you know, but going back to doing it is still different. I find it much easier to stay calm in game situations. There’s a different mindset. I tend to be a lot more analytical sometimes. It’s great. We have a great staff. Everybody gets along great, there aren’t any egos involved. It’s been good.”
Did it help to have this tournament come up so quickly after such an abrupt end to the Connecticut Sun season?
“It probably was good for my mind to get into something right away without having to dwell on some things for a while. It’s a long enough off-season as it is. You get plenty of time to rehash, rethink, plan. I think it also helps you think about things that you can or should do in the future when you jump into a different system, different players, you get reminded sometimes of things that are important to you that you need to put back in play for your own team. I could have used a little bit more of a break, mainly for the sake of my family more than anything else. It will be a long couple of months – we don’t finish this thing until November 15th. It’s going to be a lot of work. There are some advantages, though. I get to go and see a lot of players from other countries, to evaluate them, see how they compare. Like I said, I think that there are seven or eight players on Cuba’s team that could play. Going to Russia in this next tournament, we are going to play against (2007 Sun draft pick) Sandrine Gruda’s team, they are the host team in this tournament. Being around another set of players for a couple of weeks and being exposed to some other ideas will be good for us going forward. When we take the college tour, we will get an up close view of some of the players that we are looking at for this draft, so that will be good too.”
