Who will be Team USA's starting five? An Olympic women's basketball mailbag (2024)

In just over a month, Team USA will be taking the floor against Japan for its opening game of the Olympics. The group, in pursuit of its eighth consecutive gold medal, is a veteran team in which all 12 players have either won an Olympic gold medal or a World Cup gold medal (or both).

With the games inching closer, questions are swirling. So, let’s talk. We’ll do at least another mailbag before the Games, but for now, these questions were top of mind for our readers.

For people who only watch international basketball once every four years, what are the biggest differences between the international game and the WNBA or college basketball? — Robby W.

As many new-found WNBA fans are learning, there’s a significant jump in the game’s physicality from college to the WNBA. You can expect that moving to the international game, too, as the physicality will take yet another step up as the refs let players play.

Viewers might also notice another significant difference in the rules and structure of the game since the Olympics are played by FIBA rules. For example:

• The court is slightly smaller and the 3-point line is closer than in the WNBA.
• FIBA only allows for two timeouts in the final two minutes of the game (so those close games can’t be stretched too much).
• Players only get five fouls, as opposed to six in the WNBA. Technical fouls count toward the five-foul count.
• The basketball is slightly larger.
• No defensive three-seconds rule so defensive players can camp out in the lane even if they’re not actively guarding someone.
• A player in the frontcourt can’t inbound the ball to a player in the backcourt.
• Only the head coach can call timeouts, and all timeout calls need to be made to the table (not the on-court officials).
• It’s more common in the men’s game, but the goaltending rules are different — players still can’t interfere with the ball when it’s moving downward toward the basket, but once it hits the rim, it’s fair play for either team.
• Off a timeout or a rebound in the final two minutes, teams can advance the ball (same as college).

One of my favorite stat-nerdy things: Assists are credited a little bit differently (some might say, liberally) but what I enjoy is that players get assists for free throws. So, if A’ja Wilson gets fouled on a jumper and misses the shot but makes one or two free throws, whoever passed her the ball for that missed shot gets credited with an assist (for the points from the free throws).

Speaking of people who can throw assists to Wilson …

Will Chelsea Gray be fully healthy in time for the Olympics? Any sort of minutes restriction expected? — Aaron M.

Gray made her long-awaited return to the floor on Wednesday night. It had been eight months since we had seen her in action and she wasted no time making an impact, registering an assist on her first offensive possession (the 1,500th of her career) and throwing a behind-the-back beauty not long after.

CHELSEA GRAY CHECKS IN FOR THE FIRST TIME THIS SEASON TO A HUGE OVATION 👏🗣️ pic.twitter.com/Vwx1bsM2ZP

— ESPN (@espn) June 20, 2024

The selection committee had said it was in contact with Gray’s team and that the group felt confident that she would good to go come late July. The roster needs to be set 48 hours before the women’s competition starts, so the committee understood the situation and knew the deadline.

My sense is that Gray, who has dealt with serious injuries before, took her time with this to ensure she was ready. With younger athletes, sometimes, they rush a return because they feel as if they’re going to fall too far behind or lose out on something if they spend too much time recovering. Not so for a player like Gray.

Against the Storm, Gray came off the bench and registered seven assists in 16 minutes. It won’t be long before we see Gray back in the starting lineup and inching up closer to her 30-minutes-per-game average. With a five-week run-up to the Olympics, I’m confident she’ll be functioning at full throttle by the end of July.

Where do you rank Australia in the medals picture? — Nick L.

Like the U.S., Australia has a tough draw in group play — France, Canada and Nigeria. The top two teams out of each group advance to the quarterfinals along with the two best third-place teams (by record and then point differential).

But, as long as Australia gets out of group play, they’ve got a shot at a medal. There are plenty of names that WNBA fans will recognize on the roster, but we’ve got to start with Lauren Jackson, the 43-year-old who won two titles with the Seattle Storm and was named WNBA MVP three times came out of retirement in 2022 and was back in the Australian national team pool not long after. Along with Bec Allen, Ezi Magbegor, Sami Whitcomb and Cayla George, there are plenty of reasons to think this team can put together a run.

Like many countries, their depth falls off after their top group, and their reserves wouldn’t quite be able to go toe-to-toe with a Team USA that’s playing its A game. But it has been 12 years since an Australian team was on the podium (Jackson was the Opals’ leading scorer and rebounder that year …) and this group appears primed to get back to that spot.

Who do you think will be (Team USA’s) biggest opponent? — James S.

With the group play (and beyond), Belgium is going to pose a challenge that only gets tougher if Kyara Linskens is good to go (the 6-4 center has dealt with injuries over the past few months). The Cats are a team that has a core that has played together for years and is led by Emma Meesseman, Julie Allemand, Julie Vanloo and Antonia Delaere. Belgium and the U.S. faced off in the Olympic qualifiers in a tough game, though neither team was playing at full strength. So, I’m excited to see this rematch on Aug. 1.

As noted above, Australia has weapons, and its coach — New York Liberty coach Sandy Brondello — is quite familiar with Team USA’s players. She has coached four of the players (Diana Taurasi, Brittney Griner, Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu) and has scouted the rest of the roster, too.

As host country, France should have a significant home-court advantage at every game, and there’s certainly good reason for the French to rally around exciting players like Marine Johannès, Gabby Williams and Iliana Rupert. Les Bleues took home bronze in Tokyo, so they’ll be looking to stay on the podium in 2024.

Who do you think is the most deserving player left off the squad? — Anonymous

This is a tough question because there is so much talent in the U.S., so by default, plenty of deserving and talented players are left stateside every Olympics. But, if we’re looking at the history of the Team USA program, two names jump out …

Ariel Atkins: Team USA is very much a place where you pay your dues by showing up and committing to the program. It’s why a majority of the roster is players who’ve been through the Team USA junior system, and it’s why I wasn’t sure about whether or not Atkins would be on this roster. Though I didn’t put her on my projection, she was one that felt like she could’ve certainly been in the fold due to her Team USA resume and how she has committed to the program over the last Olympic cycle — gold medal at the 2020 Olympics, gold medal at the 2022 World Cup and a part of the 2024 Olympic qualifying team.

Aliyah Boston: Another huge part of the Team USA ethos is the idea of passing on the culture by bringing up those young players (who’ve been through the junior team ranks) and exposing them to the Olympic stage before they’re called upon to lead the team. The youngest players this summer will be 26 (Jackie Young and Ionescu). That’s a significant departure from previous rosters, and while it’s hard to say that a player in their early 20s earned a spot over someone else, there’s something to be said for being a young player who deserves that “young player spot” that has previously existed on prior rosters.

Who do you see starting in the first game? Gray, Stewie, and A’ja seem like locks if healthy. Do you go big with Griner or start two of the pile of available shooting guards? — Brian V.

In addition to Gray, Stewart and Wilson, I think Napheesa Collier — who not only has a great player-coach relationship with Cheryl Reeve but was also showed herself as one of the most clutch players in the field during the Olympic qualifiers in February — is a starter. That leaves an off-ball guard spot open. I could see it going a few different ways, and I think it has a lot to do with how Reeve is going to want to utilize her bench weapons.

But if I were the coach, I think I’d be deciding between Jewell Loyd and Kahleah Copper. Loyd has Olympic experience, and though her 3-point shot hasn’t been hitting this season in the W, she’ll likely have more space to operate at the Olympics when opponents need to contend with a Stewart-Wilson-Collier interior bonanza. But, Copper could make a lot of sense there, too. Few have had a better start to the WNBA season, and with a team that has the talent and depth of Team USA, feeding the hot hand for the fifth starting spot isn’t a bad idea.

Jackie Young and Kelsey Plum also have solid cases to be inserted into that fifth starting spot, but I think bringing those two off the bench together gives Team USA a boost that more than equalizes any potential counterpunch from any team in the field. During the 2016 Olympics, when there was a large Minnesota Lynx contingent on that team, only Maya Moore started. So, when the reserves came in, it was a group that had a lot of cohesion because of the consistent play from Lindsay Whalen, Seimone Augustus and Sylvia Fowles. If Young and Plum come off the bench while leaving Las Vegas Aces teammates Gray and Wilson on the floor, you’re operating with a group that has chemistry, experience and firepower.

Can you imagine being an opposing coach? Your starting five has had to contend with Gray-Loyd/Copper-Collier-Wilson-Stewart and now the second wave comes and it’s … the defending two-time WNBA champs plus Alyssa Thomas or Brittney Griner? Sheesh.

The under-30 group of American point guards is thin. Do you have any theories on why that is and who do you see as future Olympic PGs beyond Caitlin Clark? — Brian V.

To me, this general trend speaks more to how the game is moving into position-less basketball than some sort of lack of positional development in the U.S. Because of where the game is right now, the bookends of the traditional starting five — true point guards and true centers — are becoming more of an amalgam of the 1/2/3 and the 3/4/5.

There certainly are teams and programs that want true point guards, and that’s why we’ve seen such bumps for individual PGs on the WNBA free agency market (think of Jordin Canada and Natasha Cloud during their most recent free agencies) or in the transfer portal (think of Princeton’s Kaitlyn Chen being pursued by so many top college programs).

But if this is where basketball is moving, then Team USA doesn’t need to have a pure point guard to continue the dynasty. Plus, Gray is only 31. She could have another two Olympics ahead of her if she so chooses. Caitlin Clark has a chance to carry the torch after her. At that point, it’s hard to say what basketball will look like and how much it might trouble some that the era of the pure point guard has passed.

(Top photo of A’ja Wilson and Napheesa Collier: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)

Chantel Jennings is The Athletic's senior writer for the WNBA and women's college basketball. She covered college sports for the past decade at ESPN.com and The Athletic and spent the 2019-20 academic year in residence at the University of Michigan's Knight-Wallace Fellowship for Journalists. Follow Chantel on Twitter @chanteljennings