Back Home : After Honing Her Skills Overseas, Edwards Is Ready to Lead U.S. Women to Third Consecutive Gold Medal

Teresa Edwards has found a basketball home where her talents are appreciated more often than once every four years.

For her, approval is measured in broad-based fan support and supplemented by a reported $200,000 annual salary. She shoots, she scores, she cashes a paycheck. There, a female basketball player in her late 20s is a star, not a mail carrier, a graduate student or the girls’ coach at her old high school.

There is not anywhere near the United States.

Edwards had to travel overseas to find a place where playing below the rim isn’t always treated with disdain. An afterthought in the United States, despite her Olympic gold medals in 1984 and 1988, the 5-foot-11, 155-pound Edwards is big in Japan, where she is the high-scoring, highly compensated shooting guard on a pro team in Nagoya sponsored by Mitsubishi.

Another selling point: There, the fans don’t spend time grousing about what women can’t do on the basketball court. If they want to see a jam, they can flip on the TV and catch an NBA game.

“They’re much more excited about a three-pointer than a dunk,” Edwards reports. “That makes them much better fans of women’s basketball. They go crazy when someone shoots a three, and they shoot a lot of them over there.”

Crazy?

Edwards qualified her answer.

“They don’t go wild,” she said. “If you know them, they don’t go wild about anything. They just applaud politely if someone hits a three.”

Imagine a place where a dunk by Michael Jordan would be greeted with polite applause.

“Everyone wants to be like Mike,” Edwards said. “Maybe some of these people will want to be like these girls.”

Edwards isn’t the only woman who has had to travel the world to find professional success. Eleven of the 12 women on the U.S. Olympic basketball team played either in Europe or Japan last season. The exception is point guard Suzie McConnell, who is a wife, mother and high school coach in the Pittsburgh area.

The options overseas have helped the women on the Olympic team reach a new, higher standard. In 1984, the nucleus of the Olympic team consisted of top collegiate players. Eight years later, it has swung toward the pros. No collegian even made the initial cut at the trials in May at Colorado Springs, Colo.

“Going overseas has afforded them the opportunity to really blossom,” U.S. Olympic Coach Theresa Grentz said. “And they’ve been able to take their game to another level. The international game is very different than our collegiate game. That process we have nurtured has been the key.”

Said Ann Meyers, former UCLA star and television analyst, “There’s no comparison. There’s nothing that beats playing overseas now. The college players at the trials just weren’t good enough. It’s like the men; you’d rather have someone who is experienced and 26 years old than a 21-year-old.”

For Edwards, who turns 28 next week, it has been a long journey to professional success, which has meant sacrifices. Every season, she gets on a plane and takes off for several months, leaving her four brothers and her mother, Mildred, back home in Cairo, Ga.

Her best friend and Olympic teammate, forward Katrina McClain, is far away, too, rebounding over everything in sight in the Italian professional league. Edwards and McClain established their friendship at the University of Georgia, leading the team to a second-place finish in the 1985 NCAA tournament.

Edwards has played in Japan for the last three seasons, but she began her professional career in Vicenza, Italy. Although she made about $50,000 per year there, she realized after two seasons that money couldn’t buy peace of mind.

She said she wasn’t getting proper respect and now professes utter disdain for her former employers.

“I didn’t like Italy,” she said. “It was very hard to adapt. So I finished up school (at Georgia). In Japan, the people admire your ability and treat you with respect. I don’t think the Italians respect your talent.

“They just want everything they can squeeze out of you.”

Japan has been easier in some ways. Yet Edwards finds it more and more difficult to hop on that plane every season. She speaks only a little Japanese, and there is only one other American on her team in Nagoya. And she has no intention of exploring the area by automobile.

“Drive? The traffic--it’s crazy,” she said. “As long as I can eat, I’m fine. There’s Mac’s, Wendy’s--they have it all. And they keep up with our music, which is great.”

They try to keep up with Edwards on the court, too. But she can dominate a game. You could say there are two basketball versions of Edwards--one who blends smoothly into the scene during a 20- or 30-point blowout and the star with a commanding presence, leading the fast break if the game is on the line.

“It was a reality,” said Georgia Coach Andy Landers, who watched four years of this transformation. “Gosh, it got to where you didn’t even assume it was coming. You knew it was coming. If our lead went from 20 to 12, you knew it was going to get back to 20. And quickly.”

That ability has been seen on the international stage since 1984. That year, Edwards was on the Olympic team but spent most of the tournament on the bench. In 1988, she was the second-leading scorer for the Americans in Seoul, averaging 16.6 points. She also led in assists, steals and field goal percentage. McClain was the leading scorer, with 17.6 points, and rebounder, with 10.4.

Since 1986, Edwards and McClain have gone 1-2 in scoring four times on U.S. teams, including the 1990 World Championships. In Barcelona, Edwards will make the record book as the first American--male or female--to play basketball in three Olympics.

“Teresa Edwards is the best women’s basketball player in the world,” said Meyers, without hesitation. “Even better than (Brazil’s) Hortencia.”

Landers looks past Edwards’ individual statistics, saying: “This woman has played in approximately 28 USA basketball tournaments, and she has 27 gold medals and one bronze.”

Oh, the bronze.

You get the idea Edwards wouldn’t mind dunking her one and only bronze medal into the wastebasket. That is a reminder of last summer’s effort at the Pan American Games in Cuba. There, the United States was upset by Brazil and Cuba, finishing third.

It serves as a motivating factor for Edwards, although she dislikes talking about what went wrong in Cuba.

“It added an extra bit of motivation for the people who were there,” she said. “But only three of us (current Olympians) were there. Different team, different atmosphere. It could be anything. We lost.”

She doesn’t have much to say about the highly publicized U.S. men’s Olympic team, either. There is one school of thought that the men will receive so much attention, the women are bound to get some of the leftover notice. Another theory, perhaps a more likely one, is that the women will receive even less publicity in Barcelona than usual because of the seemingly unbeatable U.S. men.

The women have the pressure to “threepeat” at the Olympics, but the payoff won’t be waiting back home, because there are no professional leagues or endorsement opportunities.

“How can you be a star in a man’s world?” Edwards said. “The men run everything. The only time we get noticed is in an Olympic year.”

Edwards, though, is sustained by her love of basketball and the opportunities overseas. Landers says she would find a way to keep her game at an elite level, even if there wasn’t the Japanese option.

“Teresa would be in a summer league, playing against guys,” Landers said. “She doesn’t need you or me or someone else to tell her how great she is. It just doesn’t matter once she steps on the court. Teresa Edwards is the greatest competitor to put on a pair of basketball shoes.”

Edwards didn’t even recognize her own desire for the game. It was generally assumed that she would give up basketball after Seoul.

“After ‘88, I thought that would be it. I never knew I was so competitive,” she said. “This is the best it gets for women’s basketball.”

Again, Edwards is saying this probably will be her final Olympic appearance. Landers respectfully disagrees, pointing out that the ’96 Games are in Atlanta, which is about four hours north of her hometown.

“It would not surprise me if she was still at it in ‘96,” said Landers, who has watched Edwards play since she was in ninth grade.

“I’m not going to second-guess her. But if she believes she’s still competitive, I think Teresa will play.”

Grentz looks at the men’s team and puts it into perspective, saying: “If you’re good enough, you are just the right age.”