Intangibles by Joan Ryan

Author:Joan Ryan [RYAN, JOAN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2020-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Just Us

Tara VanDerveer was unpacking her bags at her Palo Alto home when she came across the box. She picked it up, headed for her backyard patio, and set it on the outdoor table. Inside was a set of drinking glasses. VanDerveer had just returned from coaching the US women’s national basketball team in the 1994 FIBA World Championship in Australia. She had won the souvenirs in a raffle while she was there. On the patio, she lifted one of the pretty glasses from the box and hurled it to the concrete floor. She shattered each one in turn until they lay in shards at the foot of her potted azaleas.

Her team had fallen in the semifinals, and the loss was an embarrassment. They’d let Brazil score 108 points on them. The fourteen-hour flight back from Sydney did nothing to calm VanDerveer’s fury. The team had practiced together before the tournament for two weeks at Stanford University, where VanDerveer had built one of the most successful basketball programs in the country. Some of the veteran players showed little enthusiasm for the coach’s exhausting twice-a-day workouts and what they considered a stifling style of play. VanDerveer preached the “gospel of five,” all five players maneuvering to create openings and set traps like pieces on a chessboard. But what the coach saw in Australia was her star players scrapping her plan in favor of winning games all by themselves. VanDerveer was apoplectic on the sidelines. Maybe raw athleticism once worked against international competition. It was 1994 now. Other countries had caught up to the Americans. VanDerveer saw a team that was undisciplined, sloppy, and weak.

Losing in the semifinals to Brazil was bad enough, but losing like that? After the tournament, the coach sent a pointed, four-page letter to the players. “Shakespeare said, ‘The hungry lion hunts best.’… As a USA Team, we are in denial. We are arrogant and soft,” she wrote. For months afterward, as she ran on her treadmill before heading to Stanford every morning, she watched the videotape of the Brazil loss. It played on her VCR repeatedly until every rushed shot, careless turnover, and missed rebound had been seared into her memory.

Teresa Edwards, the most seasoned and decorated player, returned from Australia with a bad taste in her mouth, too. She knew VanDerveer didn’t like her, but she didn’t know why. If anyone should be ticked off, it should be her. At the training camp at Stanford, VanDerveer had hollered at her constantly: about how she ran, how she shot, how she passed. What was it with this lady? Edwards had played in two Final Fours, three Olympics, and two FIBA World Championships. She had two Olympic gold medals. Her whole life had been basketball since her childhood in rural Cairo (pronounced kay-row), Georgia, playing with her four brothers at Holder Park. Now she was thirty years old with eight seasons in the European pro leagues under her belt. She wasn’t one of VanDerveer’s college girls. Sometimes she had snapped back at the coach.

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