At the time she was a woman playing what many still saw as a man’s game. In later years I Bucks Jersey was reminded of her playmaking skills while watching Marta, the great No10 of the Brazil women’s football team, and of her focused aggression when Nicole Adams became the first woman to win a gold medal in the Olympic boxing tournament. Last weekend Staley came back into view when, as the head coach of the University of South Carolina’s women’s basketball team, she led her team to victory over Mississippi State in the national college championships final in Dallas – the only significant honour that had eluded her as a player. Twenty one years ago Staley’s brilliance, and that of her team-mates Sheryl Swoopes and http://www.officialbuckstore.com Lisa Leslie, allowed the worst aspects of the Atlanta Games – the tawdry commercialism, the temporary ethnic cleansing of the inner city and the shock of an anti-abortionist’s bomb killing a person and injuring more than a hundred in the Centennial Olympic Park – to fade into the background, at least for an hour or two. They were a squad with a mission, recruited 12 months earlier by the US basketball association and promised $50,000 (then £33,000) each in exchange for committing themselves to the project of winning a gold medal – and thereby giving a boost to the launch of a women’s professional league in the land of the all-conquering NBA. When they did their stuff at the Olympics, inevitably it was in the shadow of a men’s squad featuring such stars as Scottie Pippen, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal and Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway. The men’s job was to live up to the achievements of the original Dream Team in Barcelona four years earlier, when Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan brought a new level of celebrity to Baron de Coubertin’s cavalcade of athleticism. As that group of millionaires took a morning stroll together down the Ramblas, the entire population of Barcelona seemed to gather around them, staring in awe and delight at these giants whose golden aura outshone even the bright Catalan sun. Advertisement Their successors did their stuff efficiently enough on home ground in Atlanta but Anthony Tolliver Womens Jersey lacked the same magnetism. The women were more interesting as human beings and more fun to watch. How could you not love a team in which the 5ft 6in Staley had spent the year of intense preparation rooming with the 6ft 5in Lisa Leslie, the first woman to dunk a basketball in a women’s NBA game? If Staley was a tenacious little terrier, Leslie was a beautifully groomed Saluki. “I guess it’s a question of opposites attracting,” Leslie said after their opening victory over Cuba. “She’s East coast, I’m West. She’s a little conservative, I’m known for being a little bit Hollywood. Staley, then 26, was a product of the tough housing projects of north Philadelphia. She had played baseball and football as well as shooting hoops with the boys on a vacant lot at the corner of 25th Street and Diamond Avenue. “I wasn’t always the first person to be picked,” she recalled. “But it got to the point where I earned my place.” She was in junior high school when a letter arrived from the University of Virginia offering her a basketball scholarship. “My only chance of going to college,” she said. She became a college basketball star, but on graduating there was no professional http://www.officialbasketballkingstore.com/Arron_Afflalo_Jersey league into which she could make a natural transition. The only serious option was to take her skills abroad, to Brazil, Italy, Spain and France. For a young woman from the projects, it was the equivalent of the Grand Tour. Then came the request to join the Olympic squad and a year of bonding with her new team-mates. Among them was Leslie, a Californian who had trained regularly with the LA Lakers and formed a friendship with Magic Johnson, who gave courtside support during their matches in Atlanta.
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