1996 US women’s Olympic basketball team to enter Hall of Fame on Saturday after transforming US women’s basketball

The 1996 United States women’s Olympic basketball team will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on Saturday after helping to accelerate the launch of the WNBA and re-establish American dominance following the Atlanta Games in 1996.

The 1996 Olympics were hosted in Atlanta, and the US programme arrived there after a painful semi-final exit at the 1992 Barcelona Games to the Commonwealth of Independent States. Rebuilding the national team became a priority for USA Basketball and the NBA, which supported the creation of a women’s professional league; USA Basketball assembled a national squad for a year-long international tour and Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer took a sabbatical to lead the team.

“Our group was a really tight-knit group, really tight,” Olympic guard Dawn Staley said Friday. “We had been through so much together that yes, we often talked about what it meant [to be competing for the US at the time]. We had the perfect, in retrospect, the perfect coach in Tara that allowed us to handle any type of pressure that we would face because of the pressure she put on us to perform at a high level daily. She didn’t let her foot off the gas.

“And because of that, we knew we could handle anything physically, because the physical part of what we were doing strengthened us mentally and it never really broke our spirit. So we felt like if this team was going to be the team that pushes women’s basketball, professional women’s basketball over the line, it was [the team] that we could handle the pressure.”

By the time the Games arrived, the US roster — Dawn Staley, Lisa Leslie, Teresa Edwards, Carla McGhee, Ruthie Bolton, Nikki McCray, Sheryl Swoopes, Venus Lacey, Katy Steding, Jennifer Azzi, Rebecca Lobo and Katrina Felicia McClain — captured gold in front of a home crowd, a victory that the article says helped boost both the newly launched WNBA and the American Basketball League (ABL), which preceded and briefly overlapped with the WNBA.

The WNBA celebrated its 30th season this year, and the 1996 triumph is credited in the piece as the start of USA Basketball’s run that became eight consecutive Olympic gold medals. The Hall of Fame class on Saturday will include members of the 1996 team plus three players who emerged after the league’s creation: Chamique Holdsclaw (first overall pick in 1999), Candace Parker (first overall pick in 2008) and Elena Delle Donne (second overall pick in 2013); the wider inductee group also lists Doc Rivers, referee Joey Crawford and retired NBA player A’mare Stoudemire.

Candace Parker recalled watching the 1996 team as a child and idolising Leslie, Swoopes and Edwards, and reflected on the squad’s wider impact: “[The 1996 team is] a catalyst for the reason why women’s professional sports, not just basketball and sports, exists,” she said. Parker also linked the induction to the legacy of coach Pat Summitt: “I think Coach definitely wrote this in the stars for us to go in, in the same class,” Parker said. “I think she’d definitely be super proud. I know she would be on stage with both of us 100%."

For Dawn Staley the Olympic gold remained a personal landmark. “It was the tangible thing that I wanted and I worked really hard for because I only saw women play in the national championship game and the Olympics,” she said. “So those were my two goals that drove me. And when I left college in ‘92, I knew I wasn’t going to get a national championship, right? Because I had not thought about coaching.

“But then when I got the gold medal, it was the only one that I thought I had left to check off as a childhood dream.”

On Saturday the 1996 US women’s basketball team will be formally inducted into the Hall of Fame, joining Chamique Holdsclaw, Candace Parker, Elena Delle Donne, Doc Rivers, Joey Crawford and A’mare Stoudemire in the class.