Now Team USA’s head coach, Cheryl Reeve takes on the burden of winning women’s basketball gold

Cheryl Reeve will begin her third Olympic women’s basketball journey when Team USA plays Japan in group play Monday in Paris.

But everything will be new.

This time Reeve — an assistant to Geno Auriemma in Rio in 2016 and to Dawn Staley in Tokyo in 2021 — will be the head coach. As Reeve wryly noted, no more Mr. Nice Guy. Relationships with players are different as an assistant. You can pal around, rebound for them during warmups. Reeve still remembers so fondly her first Olympics, being an assistant on a team with Lynx players Maya Moore, Seimone Augustus, Sylvia Fowles and Lindsay Whalen. How different it seemed.

“I was the good guy, for once,” she said.

Now Reeve is steering the ship.

The U.S. women’s basketball team enters the Paris Games as overwhelming favorites, with a 55-game winning streak in Olympic competition dating back to the 1992 bronze medal game and seven straight gold medals. Expectations are as high as the French Alps.

Rising to the level of head coach on a team with this legacy is an incredible honor. But Reeve has also taken on the mantle of keeping that winning going. Win a gold medal. It’s assumed, expected.

No pressure, coach.

Reeve said she saw an interview with Auriemma — who coached for two Olympic cycles — where he said the job almost killed him. Staley, in a different interview, called the job the loneliest place on Earth.

“I didn’t hear those things before I accepted the position,” Reeve joked. “Had I, I would have let someone else take it.”

But seriously: “Every time USA Basketball calls, you answer,” Reeve said. “It’s a tremendous experience. An honor.”

There has been added strain this time around. Reeve has been drawn into the controversy about whether Caitlin Clark should be on the team, even though the coach wasn’t responsible for picking the roster.

But Reeve has dealt with pressure before. There were the expectations the Lynx created during their run of four WNBA titles in seven years, going from the league’s up-and-coming team to the one everyone was targeting. The Olympics are a bigger stage, but the lessons Reeve learned with the Lynx between 2011 and 2017 remain.

“You have to lock in on your experience,” she said. “We lock in our journey, lock in on the day-to-day, or even possession-by-possession. That helps me stay in the moment of what I can control.”

Look at the big picture and you lose sight of the games in front of you. Worry about legacy and you’re not thinking about what it takes to continue it. Yes, the U.S. women’s basketball team is one of the greatest sports dynasties ever. But, as Reeve said, this specific group — even though the roster and coaching staff are peppered with past Olympic experience — is unique.

“You can’t care about what others are saying,” Reeve said. “You have to focus on yourself.”

Olympic women’s basketball is becoming increasingly competitive. Reeve knows this. The Americans’ average margin of victory while winning the gold in Tokyo was 16 points, the lowest since the team’s streak of gold medals began in Atlanta in 1996.

As in the NBA, more and more international players are playing in the WNBA. Again like the men, methods and tactics from the international game are making their way into WNBA analytics. Australia, Spain and host France are among the medal contenders.

Reeve has seen this before, at both the college and pro level. Tennessee women’s success helped elevate Auriemma’s UConn teams to greatness. UConn’s success fueled South Carolina’s rise. Winners are both an example and a target.

“If you want to win gold, you have to beat the USA,” Reeve said. “So maybe teams use more resources, start preparation earlier. We’ve seen that, for sure. For most people, they believe it’s a foregone conclusion USA will win gold. That’s a false viewpoint. It was hard in 2016, in 2020, regardless of the scores. None of us on the inside of USA basketball thinks this is or will be easy. And it never has been.’’

The all-star U.S. team is loaded with talent, including Breanna Stewart, Brittney Griner, Diana Taurasi, A’ja Wilson and the Lynx’s Napheesa Collier. But the roster is light on preparation, at least together. There was limited practice time as a group before the Games begin. The Olympic team lost to a WNBA All-Star squad 117-109 on July 20, but routed Germany 83-57 on Tuesday in the final tune-up for Paris.

Reeve loves the team’s roster. She loves her coaching staff, which includes Mike Thibault (the WNBA’s winningest coach), Duke coach Kara Lawson and Texas A&M coach Joni Taylor, and the way they all worked together while winning the 2022 FIBA World Cup.

To Reeve, it’s a collective effort. But for the head coach, it’s different.

“I’m the one who will have the sleepless nights,” she said.