SYDNEY – For most young American girls wanting to play in the WNBA or on the USA Women’s National and Olympic teams the easiest pathway is the WNBA. Making the USA Women’s National team is a dream many have missed.
The timeline to be a USA Basketball player with it’s limited roster and journey starts with trying out for a USA Junior team and then hopefully make the USA Women’s National team pool. Over the past two decades this was a hard task as most of the WNT and Olympic spots were held by long time players such as Sue Bird, Dianna Taurasi, Tina Charles and Tamika Catching. Lots of experience and lots of player who never had a shot at those slots.
The list of players who “could’ve been” a USAB World Cup or Olympic are long and distinguished. For every player who either got cut or was never asked there was only one other alternative if you wanted to play at the FIBA World Cup level or the IOC Olympic Games – go rep another country.
Two of the top biggest examples of ‘players’ in the WNBA not in the USA pipeline are Courtney Vandersloot who ended up playing for the Hungarian national team and Jonquel Jones from the Bahamas who is playing for Bosnia Herzegovina here in Sydney, Both are considered top WNBA and international stars. But those are limited stories.
The ‘other’ story is the other Americas team representing many an American citizen is Puerto Rico. This is the rare story where you can be an American of Puerto Rican heritage and have a shot at playing in the Olympic or even here in Sydney at the FIBA World Cup.
That dream has come true for a number of PR National Team with three prominent New Yorker’s here along with Metro NYC players on this roster. Everyone is youth NYC metro basketball is familiar with Jennifer O’Neill (Kentucky), Brianna Jones (Georgetown) Arella Guirantes (Rutgers). Ten of the 12 roster players all play professionally overseas with two Trinity San Antonio (Cal Baptist) and Zaida Gonzalez (Florida International) still playing college ball. Tayra Melendez (Rhode Island), Sofia Roma (Wagner/Duke) and India Pagan (Stoneybook) were American born. Narimar Vargas (Stoneybrook), Isalys Quinones (Darmouth) and Pamala Rosado are from the Island. Mya Hollingshed from Colorado was naturalized. Seven of the 2021 Olympic team members did not make this team along with leading scorer Jazmon Gwathmey missed this event.
Brianna Jones who played at North Babylon (NY) high school, travel basketball for the Philadelphia Belles before stops at Louisville and then Georgetown has the best perspective on why playing “internationally” but not on the USA Team is still fulfilling a dream.
“You figure it out fast,” said Brianna Jones a new edition from last year’s Olympic Team in Tokyo. “Your pool of talent is going to mostly be WNBA players, which if fine. Once I saw the USA pool talent was smaller. For me the goal was always to play for Puerto Rico. Obviously you see other players going to player for other countries or go get naturalized.”
“For me it was more like a family thing, it’s honor to play for Puerto Rico. I’ve been trying to get down since I was 15,” said Jones. “To be able to play at the World Cup now is unbelievable. Plus, at the end of the day you end up at the same place as the USA, Australia so it doesn’t make any difference for me.”
The big test for Puerto Rico comes tomorrow with an early 11:30am (Sydney time) showdown for the final Pool A spot with South Korea.
NOTES: This team is mostly made up of “New Ricians” – those born in the United States who’s parent or grandparent were born on the island. This is a common phrase among those who have to choose to either try the USA Basketball route or decide to make a roster that has a chance to play at the highest level with Canada right now being the only other Americas power in front of Brazil and Mexico.
Puerto Rico which was in the same FIBA Qualifying Pool as Russia, USA and Belgium ended up taking the spot from Russia when the international sports community and FIBA decided to not allow Russia into their events for the time being.
