After a nerve-wracking final versus France, the United States of America women’s basketball team emerged victorious with a score of 67-66 and secured their eighth consecutive gold medal in the last event of the Paris Games. This victory solidified their position as the most dominant team in the history of the Olympic Games.
The Americans were trailing by double digits in the third quarter of the game, but they fought back to extend their record of 61 consecutive victories in Olympic competition, which dates back to 1992. The game was played in front of a rowdy audience at the Bercy Arena, which chanted loudly with each basket that France made. The United States of America women’s basketball team broke the previous record for the longest Olympic gold medal sequence in a traditional team sport by achieving this feat. They broke the previous record set by the American men’s basketball team, which had won seven straight gold medals from 1936 to 1968.
A’ja Wilson scored a game-high 21 points in a contest that was only decided by a basket made by Gabby Williams in the final second of the game off of a cross-court pass from Marine Johannes. The basket came from just inside the three-point line, which prevented the home team from having a chance to extend the game into overtime by a marginal margin of centimetres. After taking into consideration the fact that only two teams during the record win streak of the United States squad have been able to keep the difference within single digits, it was surprising enough that France managed to keep it so close.
“We were just resilient in what we needed to do,” said Wilson, who won her second gold medal at the Olympics. “We continued to move forward, bucket for bucket. It is a fantastic basketball game, and it is exactly what fans want to see. We were able to get stops, and we started feeling it together as a team. Our defence had already kind of settled in.
This matchup between the United States of America and France was a repeat of the gold-medal game that took place at the London Games in 2012. The United States claimed victory in that game by a score of 36 points, which was the greatest margin of victory in an Olympic basketball final. It was a little bit closer than that one.
The United States of America team, despite their formidable firepower, entered the game for the gold medal having failed to put together a complete 40-minute effort during the entirety of the competition. Sunday was another day in which this pattern continued, with the United States of America finishing with 19 turnovers and shooting only two of twelve from three-point range (17%). The Americans played particularly sloppily in terms of possession during the first half, which featured poor scoring and ended with both teams tied at 25 points each.
At the beginning of the third quarter, France scored ten points without a single opponent answering, giving them a 35-25 advantage. The already exciting Bercy Arena burst into a wall of sound with this news. Napheesa Collier’s wide-open layup off of a magnificent Ionescu feed gave the United States of America a 41-40 lead. However, the Americans were able to close the gap almost quickly with the efforts of Wilson, Kelsey Plum, Breanna Stewart, and Sabrina Ionescu, also known as the super sub.
The French were not yet finished, despite the fact that LeBron James was sitting courtside with the gold medal that he had earned in the same venue on Saturday night. Despite the fact that they were able to draw the audience back into the game by taking a 51-49 lead with 5:31 remaining, they were ultimately defeated by a series of costly mistakes down the stretch. One of these mistakes was Williams’ airballed three-point shot with France down 62-59 with 54 seconds remaining.
Brittney Griner, the centre for the United States of America, fought back tears after winning her third gold medal. “Perhaps they won’t say it’s just easy and we walk in and just win gold,” Griner said later. It is possible that they will decide to cease stating that because, as I mentioned earlier, we see everyone’s best shot. And we were able to see the shot that France provided for us.
The victory allowed Diana Taurasi to earn her sixth Olympic gold medal, which is the most ever won by an individual in any team sport in the history of the sport. Plum and Jackie Young became the first players in the history of basketball to win Olympic gold medals in both the 3×3 and 5×5 basketball competitions.
The ladies of the United States of America have won eight consecutive gold medals at the Olympics and six of the last seven World Cups. Their sole loss over that period of time in Olympic or World Cup competition came in the semi-final of the 2006 World Cup, which they suffered at the hands of Russia.
France and the United States of America competed for the gold medals in both the men’s and women’s competitions over the course of the weekend, which was the first time in the history of the Olympic Games that this had ever occurred.