Both the men’s and women’s U.S. basketball team came home from Paris with the ultimate hardware: Olympic gold medals. For the men, Paris marked a fourth consecutive Olympic gold, while for the women, the win streak extended to 8 straight gold medals. Both teams were unsurprisingly dominant throughout the Olympics, going 6-0 en route to gold — with the men winning by an average of 22 points, and the women by 15.7 points.
Still, the U.S. Olympic runs were dominated by discourse surrounding roster spots and playing time. On the men’s side, the exclusion of Celtics Finals MVP Jaylen Brown from the Olympic roster — and the decision to instead invite teammate Derrick White — became the main story once Kawhi Leonard was out of the picture.
Then, when Jayson Tatum — the second-leading scorer on the 2021 Tokyo Olympic team — was benched for both of USA’s games against Serbia, analysis around the team’s performance centered around his DNPs. Charles Barkley was one of many analysts to vocally criticize the decision, with Stephen A. Smith going so far to describing Steve Kerr’s decision as “egregious.”
Meanwhile, on the women’s side, it was Caitlin Clark’s omission from the Olympic roster that loomed over the tournament. Many media members blasted the decision to keep Clark off the roster, with USA Today columnist Christine Brennan calling it “the worst player selection decision I’ve seen in my 40 years covering the Olympics.”
On Wednesday, Cheryl Reeve, who served as the head coach of the U.S. women’s Olympic basketball team and is also the head coach of the Minnesota Lynx, expressed her frustration with just how dominant the discourse around playing time and roster spots had become.
In a press conference in Minneapolis, alongside fellow Olympians and Lynx players Napheesa Collier (USA), Bridge Carleton (Canada), and Alanna Smith (Australia), Reeves noted the outsized attention that roster decisions and rotations have received in the media.
“All you’re talking about is playing time and who’s in, or who’s on the team, or who’s not on the team. This is what we’ve become,” Reeve said. “It makes this the seat that I was sitting in a little bit more challenging, a little less rewarding. And I think that’s a sad commentary.”
The criticism didn’t stop when the U.S. women’s team arrived in Paris. Reeve’s decision to initially have the Mercury’s Diana Taurasi in the starting lineup was also scrutinized. Taurasi, the most decorated Olympian in basketball history, struggled in limited minutes, and was ultimately relegated to the bench in favor of the Ace’s Jackie Young, before completely sitting out of the gold medal game against France.
In the press conference on Wednesday, Reeve was asked about Taurasi’s minute in the Olympic run, but declined to comment.
“I’m really hopeful that we could find our way going forward, that the vitriol, etc, only hurts the game,” Reeve said. “And we can be much better than that.”
Reflecting on the Olympic experience, Reeve also noted she worked hard to ensure that her players would enjoy the pursuit of their first gold medal as a group, and not worry too much about the historical context of the program’s greatness.
“What I wanted for them was for it to be special and not feel the load of, ‘we have to win the eighth [straight gold],’” Reeve said. “Because I think then it gets lost — your own special journey gets lost. And it was our one.. You’re not going to have the same group the next time. I think if you don’t do that, then you lose the joy in what you’re doing.”
