Defending champion Team USA women remain shockingly winless in Olympic 3x3 basketball

PARIS – If there’s one sport Team USA has cornered in international play, it’s basketball .

But that’s not been true on the half-court at the Paris Olympics this week.

Dearica Hamby, Rhyne Howard, Hailey van Lith, Cierra Burdick struggled to find their groove against Australia on Thursday as they seek to defend the women’s title in the 3x3 event. The Aussies, in their Olympic debut, beat the Americans 17-15.

It was the third-in-a-row loss for the squad, which previously played Azerbaijan and Germany. But for Hamby’s signature blocks, their defense has been slow and their indecisive offense stuck, in what’s meant to be a fast-paced street-ball style sprint.

“Not in my house!” the French announcer was heard reacting to Hamby’s towering smack-down at the basket.

Still, Hamby doesn’t have the same chemistry with her new crew that she shares with fellow Los Angeles Sparks WNBA forward Cameron Brink.

Howard said it’s been a challenge trying to build on-court chemistry in a short amount of time.

"We've been together for about a week and a half,” she said last Friday. “So we need all the repetition and preparation that we can get.”

Australia, which won bronze at last year’s World Cup, bested the U.S. in off-ball plays, including seamless weaving to drive the ball to the basket.

The U.S team won the event in its Olympics debut in Tokyo in 2021 without a live crowd due to pandemic restrictions. And by the sound of it, this star-studded WNBA cast also lacked some of the fandom they’re used to in their home arenas — with the exception of three-time gold medalist Kevin Durant, who was in the audience — and were by what appeared to be a fairly neutral and heavily French crowd.

After the game, Atlanta Dream’s Howard admitted that she shared some of the blame in her team’s costly turnovers.

“We have to stay together. We know what is not clicking for us, and we have to be better at that,” she said. “We are just trying to take what we can learn from it and be better next game.”

The U.S. sits at the bottom of the eight-team pool. But there’s still time to turn it around. The U.S. plays tournament leaders Spain Thursday night.

“We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard and compete like we want to win gold,” Howard said.

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