After the USA’s Men’s team’s dominance in the quarter-final of the 2024 Paris Olympics, the Women’s contingent is set to replicate the feat tonight against Nigeria. In the group stage, Team USA won all three games comfortably and it seems like the rest of the tournament is also going to be smooth sailing. However, WNBA legend Sheryl Swoopes is not completely happy with how things are going.
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On Gil’s Arena, Swoopes talked about the poor rotation that’s currently happening on the women’s team. She still wanted to rely on A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart to handle the scoring responsibilities on the team. But the four-time WNBA Champion wanted other talented members on the team to get more minutes.
Swoopes believes that the women’s team is also going through the same set of problems as the men’s team, which is that their star-studded roster is not being utilized properly. She talked about Kahleah Copper not getting enough playing time despite being one of the best in the squad, “Kahleah Copper, who is the second or third leading scorer in the WNBA right now, is not getting any minutes.”
In the two games that she has played in, Copper came off the bench for six minutes and 13 minutes respectively.
Swoopes also outlined a positive change that she has noticed where Jackie Young is finally getting enough playing time. The 26-year-old played for 27 minutes in the last game against Germany and had 19 points with four rebounds, two assists and four steals.
While Swoopes is confident about Team USA’s chances of winning gold in Paris, she thinks that the scoring responsibility will still fall on Wilson and Stewart for them to get there. She said, “Stewie and A’ja, to me, they have to score for this team. They have to get the job done.”
The 53-year-old added that she has complete faith in the leadership of Wilson, Stewart and Diana Taurasi and she believes that they will bring the Gold home. The only issue that she has with the current team is regarding the playing time of some of the athletes. Much like how we’re seeing with the men’s team, there are too many good players to rotate in the duration of just 40 minutes.
