Team USA takes aim at a fourth consecutive FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup title when the tournament kicks off Wednesday in Sydney, Australia. This is the 19th edition of FIBA’s flagship women’s event, which began in 1953 and was won by the U.S., the nation’s first of 10 World Cup gold medals to date.
The 2022 tournament features 12 nations, including world No. 3 and host Australia, 2021 Olympic silver medalist Japan and 2021 bronze medalist France. Competition begins with round-robin play between two groups. The top four teams from each group will advance to the knockout stage, where they’ll compete in a single-elimination format.
On the line: The winner punches its ticket to the 2024 Paris Olympics, while valuable FIBA world ranking points are also up for grabs.
The 2022 FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup will stream in the U.S. on ESPN+, with six games also airing on linear television.
Team USA features five players hot off the WNBA Finals, including the champion Las Vegas Aces’ dynamic trio of 2022 WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson, 2022 WNBA Finals MVP Chelsea Gray, and All-Star MVP Kelsey Plum. The Connecticut Sun will be represented by triple-double history-maker Alyssa Thomas and 2022 WNBA Sixth Player of the Year Brionna Jones. On Tuesday, U.S. head coach Cheryl Reeve said it is unlikely all 12 players will be available for the team’s first game.
*Ages are as of Sept. 20, 2022
Fresh faces highlight Team USA’s roster for Sydney, where exactly half of the U.S. players will make their debut for USA Basketball in a major international competition: Brionna Jones, Alyssa Thomas, Sabrina Ionescu, Betnijah Laney, Kahleah Copper and Shakira Austin.
“We’re in a little bit of a transition,” said Breanna Stewart, the 2022 AP WNBA Player of the Year who’s won two Olympic gold medals and two World Cup titles as a member of Team USA. “But it really gives an opportunity for young players to come in and show what they’ve got and help take USA Basketball to the next level — and understand that everybody wants to beat us. Nobody wants us to win gold. And still, our goal every time that we are playing is to win the entire thing.”
The 2022 World Cup marks the first time since 2000 that the U.S. is without stalwarts Sue Bird (retired) and Diana Taurasi (injury), and it’s also missing veterans Tina Charles (opted out), Brittney Griner (detained in Russia since Feb. 17) and Sylvia Fowles (retired). Those five players have combined for a whopping 19 Olympic gold medals. Only five members of USA’s Tokyo 2021 gold-medal winning team are on the World Cup roster — Stewart, Ariel Atkins, Chelsea Gray, Jewell Loyd and A’ja Wilson — while Kelsey Plum (3×3 Olympic gold in 2021), Loyd, Stewart and Wilson are the only ones to have competed in the previous World Cup in 2018.
Additionally, the World Cup marks the first time at the helm for Team USA head coach Cheryl Reeve, who served as an assistant for the national team at the 2016 and 2021 Olympics and took over from Dawn Staley in December.
The FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup in Sydney features 12 national teams, with 38 games to be played over 10 days from Sept. 22-Oct. 1. The teams start with seven days of group play, with every team playing each team in their group once. Teams earn two points for a win and one point for a draw, with the top four teams from each group advancing to the knockout stage.
Ahead of the knockout stage, a draw will be used to determine the pairings and bracket placement for the eight teams in the quarterfinals: The two best-ranked teams of each group (Group A and Group B) will be drawn against the two teams ranked third and fourth of the other group.
The tournament continues with two semifinal games on Friday, Sept. 30, with the winner of each semi advancing to the gold-medal game on Saturday, Oct. 1. The losers of each semifinal will play for bronze, also on Oct. 1.
Group A:
Group B:
Notably missing in Sydney: No. 2-ranked Spain, which failed to qualify; Nigeria, whose federation withdrew the team over governance issues; and Russia and Belarus, which were banned from participating due to their invasion and ongoing war in Ukraine.
MORIOKA, Japan (AP) — Days after Iranian climber Elnaz Rekabi caused an international incident by not wearing a her country’s mandatory headscarf while competing abroad, her fate is top of mind for the world’s best climbers.
“It has made me ill — nauseous,” said American Brooke Raboutou, speaking to The Associated Press on Friday at a World Cup climbing event in northern Japan.
“I support her 100 percent and I’d like to think I can speak on behalf of most of the athletes,” she added. “I’ve reached out to her, just asking if there is anything we can do to help, to support. I know that she’s fighting a really hard battle and doing what she can to represent the women in her country.”
Raboutou said she had not received a reply.
Rekabi, 33, competed Sunday without her headscarf, or hijab, in Seoul during the finals of the International Federation of Sport Climbing’s Asia Championship. She was immediately embraced by those supporting the weekslong demonstrations in her country over the hijab that increasingly include calls for the overthrow of the country’s theocracy.
She returned home to a crowd of cheering protesters, including women not wearing the required head covering. In an emotionless interview before leaving the airport terminal, she told state television that competing without her hair covered was “unintentional.”
Sports in Iran, from soccer leagues to Rekabi’s competitive climbing, broadly operate under a series of semi-governmental organizations. Women athletes competing at home or abroad, whether playing volleyball or running track, are expected to keep their hair covered as a sign of piety. Iran makes such head coverings mandatory for women, as does Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
Rekabi’s act of what seemed to be open defiance has been described as a lightning-rod event in Iran. Activists say it lends support to the antigovernment protests sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been detained by the country’s morality police over what she was wearing.
In the tight-knit climbing community, she’s become an inspiration for many athletes who barely know her — or only know of her.
“I feel I cannot understand how it feels,” French climber Oriane Bertone said. “Athletes from that country (Iran) are obligated to wear something. I feel like this is something she did knowing perfectly that she was risking something. And that must have been really hard.
“We’re trying to be her voice because it’s not only concerning her, it’s concerning everyone in the country,” Bertone added.
Bertone was asked if she believes Rekabi is safe.
“She’s definitely not. She’s not safe right now,” Bertone said. “When we watched the (television) interview she did, she was trembling.”
Rekabi’s case has drawn comparisons to that of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai.
Peng wrote publicly a year ago about being sexually assaulted by a former high-ranking Chinese Communist Party official. She quickly disappeared from public view, tried to recant, and is reported to have come under crushing pressure as China was preparing to hold the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. She is rarely seen in public and doesn’t leave China, although she took part in some orchestrated events around the Olympics.
Then there’s sprinter Krystsina Tsimanousksya. She criticized her Belarusian team officials, then was forced to flee to Poland during last year’s Tokyo Olympics. She feared returning home and now has Polish citizenship.
Iranian athletes did not compete at the climbing event in Japan. The field was made up of largely Europeans, Americans and Japanese. The only athletes from a Muslim-majority country were two brothers from Indonesia.
The International Federation of Sport Climbing, the government body, has echoed similar statements made by the International Olympic Committee, saying it has assurances that Rekabi “will not suffer any consequences and will continue to train and compete.”
Neither the IOC nor the climbing federation has said how it will track how Rekabi is treated in Iran.
The IOC and its President Thomas Bach have repeated similar messages in the cases of Peng and the Belarusian-Polish sprinter. Bach has been criticized for looking away from well-documented human-rights abuse in Olympic host countries like China and Russia. Both nations spent billions to host recent Winter Olympics — while other nations have backed out of bids because of high costs.
American Natalia Grossman said other climbers at the event in Japan were thinking of Rekabi, and trying to find ways to support her. She said she did not know Rekabi well and had “not talked to her too much. But everyone in the climbing community is close in one way or another.”
Grossman said she wasn’t certain if Rekabi intentionally competed without the hijab. But she has her suspicions.
“I can’t know because I’m not her and I haven’t spoken to her,” Grossman said. “But every day you wear it, and you just don’t forget one day.”
Like several other climbers, Grossman argued that sports and politics could not be separated — and shouldn’t be.
“I don’t really think you can keep them apart,” she said. “I don’t think we should have to keep them apart. You should be able to make whatever statement.”
Japanese climber Miho Nonaka, who won an Olympic silver medal a year ago in Tokyo, said she was trying to understand Rekabi’s plight.
“There is some physical distance, so in terms of actual support, I think the most immediate thing I can do is share it on (social media) as much as possible, or obtain the correct information and spread it to many people,” she said in Japanese.
Marco Vettoretti, a spokesman for the climbing federation, described the climbers as “a young, cohesive and a diverse group.”
“We have Muslim athletes competing almost everywhere,” he said. “But it’s bigger than us sometimes. You try to respect everyone. Then sometimes it’s bigger than the athletes. It’s bigger than us when it comes to religion and politics.”
Vettoretti said the climbing federation expected Rekabi to be back competing in the northern hemisphere this spring.
Japanese climber Ai Mori seemed to have the same expectation, addressing her best wishes to the Iranian.
“You are not wrong,” she said in Japanese. “So do your best to come back to climbing to compete again. We’ll be waiting for you.”
Kansas City Current midfielder Lo’eau LaBonta, an eight year NWSL veteran, has been enjoying her best ever season in 2022. The 29-year-old from Rancho Cucamonga, California, has scored eight goals (six on penalties) and helped Kansas City land a spot in Sunday’s NWSL semifinal vs. OL Reign.
Ahead of the NWSL semifinals, On Her Turf caught up with LaBonta about Kansas City’s success this season, the many ups and downs of her pro soccer career, what goes into her iconic cellies, and how long she plans to continue playing.
This Q&A has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Lo’eau LaBonta: It’s so funny. People think my name is just ‘Lo.’ And they’re like, why does it have so many letters?! But no, my actual first name is (pronounced) lo-AYE-ow.
LaBonta: It depends. If I’m meeting another Hawaiian, I will tell them my full name. If I’m meeting anybody else, I leave it at ‘Lo.’ Sometimes it leads to the question, ‘What’s that short for?’ People’s first thought is always Lauren. I’ve had people just straight up call me Lauren. And I’m like, never have I put that anywhere. So yeah, it’s always a little bit of a discussion. But I love my full name and I’m very proud of it. It’s just when people can’t say it and butcher it, I’m like, ‘I’ll make it very simple for you.’
Author’s note: here’s a recording of Lo’eau LaBonta pronouncing her full first name:
LaBonta: I mean, it’s crazy. We made a lot of moves in the offseason, but then obviously, a lot of those players got hurt, unfortunately. I was telling Sam Mewis the other day that I always thought about midfielders in this league that I wanted to play with and she was, for sure, at the top of that list. We got a couple of minutes in together, but it’s definitely heartbreaking that it was so short. But there’s always (the possibility) when she recovers.
This team, we spent a lot of time together in Bradenton, Florida. We were just together constantly. We had meetings in the morning, we had practice, we ran together, we started this crazy new lifting program. And then we got a new coach (Matt Potter), obviously. And he just implemented these very basic principles that – week-in and week-out – we built on.
I think because we started at square one and everybody bought in, it was very easy to build a successful team. I’m telling you, it’s not a starting 11. We literally have a starting 20. Anybody can fall in there. As I’ve said in interviews before, we call them gamechangers, not subs. We have some of the best technical staff, we have a great sports science staff. So everybody – from top to bottom – has had a part in our success this year, for sure.
LaBonta: It’s so funny because I think our coaches have said them in interviews and people don’t realize it because they’re very basic and broad. And that’s because it’s a mentality that he likes to preach and then our styles can (fit) into it. So as long as you’re doing the things – ‘attack and pass with intent’ or ‘protect the center’ – these are very basic soccer phrases. But if you know that, and the person next to you knows that, it’s easy for you to be successful because you’re on the same page.
LaBonta: Yes and no. One of my assistant coaches (told me) a GM asked her, ‘What have you done with Lo LaBonta this year? She’s standing out.’ It’s crazy to me because I just had to score so many goals to stand out. A lot of these things I’ve been doing in games — assisting on passes, tackling – I’ve done all these years. It’s just this year, because I’ve gotten 2000 PKs, people tend to notice (the other stuff) as well.
But I would say for sure I also feel fitter this year, I haven’t had any injuries, and I just have really good people around me. I would never say I’m an individual player so everything I do, I do it even better because I have the support of my teammates around me.
LaBonta: I think that just shows, for me, soccer has always been my passion.
You know, at Stanford, I was always winning. I think I was projected to go top-10 (in the NWSL draft) and instead I went third-to-last… Like, that’s not my best stat. Then (I get to) Sky Blue, an absolute wreck of organization at the time. We didn’t know where we were going to be training on days. I ended up having to move in with my athletic trainer and (live in) a trailer. It was a mess. It was absolutely unacceptable.
At the time, I didn’t see it this way, but when I was waived and finished up my degree at Stanford… it just helped me reset and find my love of the sport again.
And then I got picked up by Kansas City, which was coached by Vlatko (Andonovski). He just helped me see the game in a different way. I absolutely loved playing there. He treated the subs and the starters the same. I (knew) he was a coach that was truly going to help me develop. He just made me love the game even more, he made me find things in my game that I could develop and make better than people around me.
Obviously, it wasn’t the best of situations. We were training on terrible turf that was like cement and then we would go play on what was one of the best pitches, but (there would only be) 15 people in the stands.
That’s also when I started dating my now husband (Roger Espinoza) — and then we got moved to Utah.
In Utah, it was very organized. We had a great setup, we had a city that was really supporting us. And then, you know, all the 2020 stuff happened and we got sold back here.
Last year, coming in last, it was hard to find the motivation to continue, to show up every day and give it your all. But that’s one thing I think every NWSL player has done. We aren’t paid like normal pro athletes are paid so we’re here because we love the sport. We love the people around us. We love showing up and being rewarded at the end of the week with a game. So I think one thing I’ve always had is my passion for the sport and that’s why I continue to play.
I told myself I was going to play two years in the league. I’m in my eighth right now, I think, I’ve lost count. But it’s because I know I can continue to get better. I don’t think I’ve peaked yet. And I’ve loved it so much. And this year has almost been a reward for all those years that I kind of suffered.
LaBonta: Honestly, for me, I have no end (date). I had those two years, I went past it, I kept getting better, I kept playing more.
Don’t worry, this is not happening anytime soon but, for female athletes, I think it’s a huge flex when they have a kid and then come back and play. Not many people can say they’ve done that, no male athlete can say they’ve done that. So I think that would be a goal in the very far future. But you know, that means I just have to keep playing for a while.
LaBonta: Exactly. It’s possible now.
LaBonta: One of the biggest ones is that people are allowed to take mental health days, no questions asked.
I think as professional athletes, or even collegiate athletes, you push no matter what. If you’re not feeling good, mentally or physically, whatever is going on, you’ve always been told to put it behind you, to show up to practice, and give your all.
The fact that we can now take a step back and (say), ‘I can get injured doing this’ or ‘this is just not good for me’ or ‘I won’t be a good teammate.’ Whatever it is, if it’s a family emergency, whatever, you have the ability to step away with no strings attached.
When the Yates report came out, I (told my teammates), ‘Guys, take these days. We don’t have a game for two weeks.’ Some people have gone through personal things so I was just pushing them to take a day and not be the person that’s just trying to be strong when, at the end of the day, it’s having an effect on you.
LaBonta: I’ll answer your second question first… I have scored so early in a few games this year, I’ve done my celebration and thought, ‘Oh no, if I score again, what am I going to do?’ And I have no idea because as soon as I use one celly, I don’t think of another one until the day before (the next game). Some people think I put a lot of thought into it and I don’t. I probably should if I’m going to get questions like this and people’s expectations are already (so high).
Lo’eau LaBonta had us worried there for a second. 😅 pic.twitter.com/VROBFrdz7A
— Attacking Third (@AttackingThird) August 20, 2022
I think I’ve always just wanted to celebrate. As soon as that one (twerking after the fake injury) went viral, I was like, ‘We are for sure going to make this a thing now.’ And it makes me so happy.
Like I said, I have the biggest passion for this sport and this just makes it even more fun. I mean, look at our second goal against Houston. I did the no-look pass to Kate (Del Fava), who scored her first goal, and I just tackled her. I felt so bad I didn’t even let her celebrate. I was like, ‘I didn’t live up to what I said! Am I a fraud right now?’ But we were just in our emotions and it was the greatest time.
LaBonta: Gosh, Desiree Scott is my heart. She’s one of the most loving human beings. She’s also one of the best leaders because she leads with love. Obviously, you see her on the field just demolishing and tackling people, but she truly is the heart of our team. I think she’s up for our ally award and everybody, for sure, was voting for her.
We’ve been together this whole time… we bonded over going out, we bonded over trauma — like all the bad coaches we’ve had together, all the bad seasons we’ve had together. And this is her first time in playoffs as well.
My husband was at the playoff game this last weekend and he was like, ‘Who was that person running out on the field and to your circle?’ It was Desiree Scott… she was suspended that game and we don’t know if she’ll get fined coming on the field but I don’t care, we will all pitch in for it because she is our heart. She’s our captain and she needed to be there, celebrating with us. She is the best teammate, the best human being – and that’s what you need in a captain.
LaBonta: With Reign, obviously they’re a very strong team. They’re the Shield winners. They’re very, very deadly going towards the goal. We played them twice this year. They beat us once, we beat them once. So it’s a good tie breaker. And we were missing people when we played them and they were missing people when we beat them. They are a very impressive team… So I think it’s going to be a battle for sure. And I hope, obviously, that we come out on top. Hopefully they were just resting (these last two weeks) and aren’t in their top shape when they play us (laughs).
Follow Alex Azzi on Twitter @AlexAzziNBC