Sparks’ Milton Named to U.S. Olympic Team
Calling it “an opportunity to fight for my country without guns but with a basketball,” DeLisha Milton of the Sparks was named Saturday to the United States’ 2000 Olympic women’s basketball team.
Milton and four others joined “core players” Lisa Leslie, her Spark teammate, Ruthie Bolton-Holifield, Nikki McCray, Katie Smith and Dawn Staley, named to the team a year ago.
Joining them are Cynthia Cooper, Yolanda Griffith, Chamique Holdsclaw and Natalie Williams.
All but two members of the team were announced by USA Basketball at Washington’s MCI Center.
Coach Nell Fortner said two players will be added, as late as a year from now.
The Olympic team will convene after the current WNBA season to begin training. It will break for next summer’s WNBA season before gathering again for final preparations for the Sydney Games.
Four of the 10 players announced Saturday played on the 1996 team that went 60-0 and swept to the gold medal in Atlanta: Leslie, Bolton-Holifield, McCray and Staley.
Another ’96 Olympian, Jennifer Azzi, was named a core player last summer but withdrew in May.
The team includes two former USC players, Cooper and Leslie, and a former UCLA standout, Williams.
Cooper, the two-time WNBA most valuable player, was a gold medalist in 1988 and played on the 1992 Olympic team that won the bronze medal. She’s the oldest at 36, Holdsclaw the youngest at 22.
Milton, an American Basketball League veteran who joined the Sparks before this season, started for the U.S. team that won the 1998 world championship.
Leslie, who was the leading scorer on the 1996 Olympic team, called that experience “phenomenal” and looked ahead Saturday.
“This is a team of great athletes and great people,” she said.
The 1996 team spent a year playing and training as a unit, a schedule no longer possible because of the WNBA.
The 2000 team will join gold medal contenders Australia, Brazil and Poland in a tournament Sept. 9-12 at San Diego. Another international tournament is scheduled for Sept. 15-18 at Stanford.
“Ideally, you’d like to have everyone together all year, like we did in ‘96,” Fortner said. “But we will make this work. We’ll be in shape.”
The Olympic team will play a series of exhibitions against college teams, including a Nov. 5 game against UCLA at Pauley Pavilion.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
U.S. Women’s Olympic Team
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Player P Ht Team Ruthie Bolton-Holifield G 5-8 Sacramento Cynthia Cooper G 5-10 Houston Yolanda Griffith C 6-3 Sacramento Chamique Holdsclaw F 6-2 Washington Lisa Leslie C 6-5 Sparks Nikki McCray G 5-11 Washington DeLisha Milton F 6-1 Sparks Katie Smith G 5-11 Minnesota Dawn Staley G 5-6 Charlotte Natalie Williams F 6-2 Utah
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Head coach: Nell Fortner. Assistant: Julie Plank.