What to know about women’s basketball at the Paris Olympics

The United States is dominant at men’s basketball. But it’s really dominant at women’s basketball.

Since the Olympics added a women’s basketball tournament in 1976, the U.S. team has won nine gold medals, one silver medal and one bronze medal. The only time the American women didn’t medal: 1980, when the United States boycotted the Games in Moscow.

Led by WNBA MVPs A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart, the U.S. will enter the Paris Olympics as the overwhelming favorites to win its eighth straight gold medal dating from the 1996 Games. The American women hold a 72-3 overall record at the Olympics and have won 55 straight games dating from the 1992 bronze medal game. If the U.S. prevails in Paris, guard Diana Taurasi will claim her sixth gold medal, which would be an Olympic record for any men’s or women’s basketball player.

When and where will the Olympic women’s basketball tournament take place?

The Olympics women’s basketball tournament at the Paris Olympics will begin July 28 and culminate with the gold medal game Aug. 11.

The opening round, or group phase, will run from July 28 to Aug. 4. All opening round games will be played at Pierre Mauroy Stadium in Lille, a French city roughly 135 miles north of Paris near the Belgium border. Pierre Mauroy Stadium is typically a 50,000-seat soccer stadium, but it features a retractable roof and can be reconfigured to host indoor events with a 27,000-seat capacity. The stadium hosted the 2015 EuroBasket tournament.

The knockout round will include the quarterfinals Aug. 7, the semifinals Aug. 9, and the gold and bronze medal games Aug. 11. All knockout round games will be played at Paris’s Accor Arena, which has hosted NBA regular season games and typically seats 15,000 fans for basketball. The arena is located roughly five miles southeast of major Paris landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe.

What is the tournament format?

The women’s basketball tournament will feature 12 teams competing in a round-robin group stage before the top eight teams advance to a single-elimination knockout round.

For the opening round, the 12 teams are divided into three groups of four. Each team will play the other three teams in its group once. The two teams with the best record in each group will automatically advance to the knockout round. The final two spots in the eight-team knockout round will go to the two remaining teams with the best records. Head-to-head performance and point differential are used as tiebreakers.

Serbia, Spain, China and Puerto Rico will make up Group A. Canada, Nigeria, Australia and France will be in Group B. The United States, Germany, Japan and Belgium constitute Group C.

In the knockout round, the eight teams are seeded based on their group stage results with winners advancing to the gold medal game. The losers of the quarterfinal games are eliminated, while the losers of the semifinal games play for the bronze medal. All told, the gold, silver and bronze medal-winning teams will play six games during the 15-day tournament.

What’s at stake for the U.S. team?

The American women are such favorites to win gold that, as of July 7, a bettor would need to wager $1,400 just to claim $100 profit in winnings. That should be no surprise: Nine of the top 10 WNBA MVP vote-getters last season were American.

With an unmatched talent pool and a rich tradition of winning, anything short of gold would be calamitous for a program that has enjoyed structural advantages over its international competitors for decades.

During the Tokyo Olympics, the U.S. women went 6-0 with an average margin of victory of 16 points. Aside from an 81-72 victory over Nigeria in its first group stage game, the United States won its next five games by double digits, including a 90-75 victory over Japan in the gold medal game.

Who is on the U.S. roster?

The 12 women selected to play for the United States are all WNBA players who are at least 26 years old: Napheesa Collier, Kahleah Copper, Chelsea Gray, Brittney Griner, Sabrina Ionescu, Jewell Loyd, Kelsey Plum, Breanna Stewart, Diana Taurasi, Alyssa Thomas, A’ja Wilson and Jackie Young.

Wilson, the 2022 WNBA MVP, and Stewart, the 2023 WNBA MVP, are the roster’s headliners, though 42-year-old guard Diana Taurasi will look to add to her case as the greatest women’s player of all time by competing in her sixth Olympics.

Griner, a 6-foot-9 center, will compete on the Olympic stage for the first time since she was imprisoned in Russia for 10 months before being released as part of a 2022 prisoner swap.

Six players on the roster won gold at the Tokyo Games: Wilson, Stewart, Taurasi, Griner, Loyd and Gray. Eight players won gold at the 2022 FIBA Women’s World Cup: Wilson, Stewart, Thomas, Copper, Gray, Ionescu, Loyd and Plum.

Additionally, Wilson, Gray and Young are members of the reigning WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces. In order, Stewart, Thomas, Wilson and Collier were the top four WNBA MVP vote-getters last season.

Why wasn’t Caitlin Clark included on the Olympic team?

In a controversial decision, USA Basketball announced in June that Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark, the 2024 WNBA No. 1 pick, would be left off the roster for the Paris Olympics. Clark, 22, has emerged over the past two years as the face of women’s basketball, and her immense popularity has produced record-setting television ratings, crowd sizes and merchandise sales in both the NCAA and WNBA.

USA Basketball committee chair Jennifer Rizzotti explained Clark’s absence by citing the “familiarity” that the roster had developed with each other and Coach Cheryl Reeve’s system. Clark was one of 14 players to earn an invitation to USA Basketball’s final pre-Olympics training camp in April, but she was unable to attend because she was playing with Iowa in the Final Four. While attending the training camp wasn’t required for selection, it typically plays a role in the selection committee’s roster decisions.

Rizzotti added that Clark’s popularity and box office appeal weren’t within “the purview of the [selection] committee,” which instead weighed “positions, depth, versatility and style of play.” Clark was also significantly younger than all 12 of the players who were selected.

Clark said she felt “no disappointment” being left off the team and that the snub would serve as motivation for competing in future Olympics.

“I’m excited for the girls that are on the team,” she said. “I know it’s the most competitive team in the world, and I know it could have gone either way.”

Who is coaching the U.S. team?

Minnesota Lynx Coach Cheryl Reeve, who has won four WNBA championships as a head coach and three WNBA Coach of the Year awards, will lead USA Basketball in Paris after guiding the program to gold at the 2022 FIBA Women’s World Cup. Reeve succeeded South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley, who led the American women to gold at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Kara Lawson, a former WNBA all-star and champion who has coached women’s basketball at Duke since 2020, will serve as one of Reeve’s assistants. Lawson won gold as a player at the 2008 Olympics.

Joni Taylor, the women’s coach at Texas A&M since 2022, and Washington Mystics General Manager Mike Thibault, who coached the team from 2013 to 2022, also will serve as assistants to Reeve.

Which teams are the top medal contenders?

China won silver at the 2022 FIBA Women’s World Cup — losing 83-61 to USA Basketball in the gold medal game — and took fifth at the Tokyo Olympics.

Australia has earned medals at the past three FIBA Women’s World Cups and advanced to the quarterfinals of the Tokyo Olympics.

France took bronze at the 2020 Olympics and the 2023 EuroBasket tournament.

Japan won its first Olympic medal with a second-place finish in 2020, while Spain’s silver in 2016 was its first Olympic medal in program history. Belgium and Canada will be seeking their first Olympic medals in Paris.

Which Olympic rules are different from the WNBA?

WNBA games and Olympic Games both consist of four 10-minute quarters, but a player is allowed just five fouls, rather than six, before being disqualified in the Olympics.

The Olympics’ goaltending rule allows any player to touch the ball once it has hit the rim. Meanwhile, defensive players are allowed to remain in the paint without triggering a three-second violation.

What is the schedule for Olympic women’s basketball?

All times AKDT

July 28: Group stage begins

July 29: U.S. vs. Japan in group stage. 11 a.m.

Aug. 1: U.S. vs. Belgium in group stage, 11 a.m.

Aug. 4: U.S. vs. Germany in group stage, 7:15 a.m.

Aug. 7: Quarterfinals

Aug. 9: Semifinals

Aug. 11: Gold medal and bronze medal games