Count them among the greats

BEIJING - If these ladies could only spend a little more time together, they might have themselves a mighty fine basketball team.

They've only been together for a month or so. In the old days, this would have been a slice of a national tour. I mean, the 1996 gold medalists beat Brazil in the championship game to go 60-0.

"We've been together four weeks," said coach Anne Donovan. "It was tough for this group to really come together."

Sure was. The eight winning margins as they stormed to America's sixth Olympic gold medal in women's basketball were 40, 45, 46, 38, 36, 44, 15, and, in Saturday night's gold medal game, 27. Too bad they just didn't have enough time to get things, you know, right.

So while we'll never know how good they could be, we are left with the memories of how good they were. And that was good enough to have people asking these ladies after a 92-65 dispatch of the Australians such questions as, "Are you the greatest team of all-time?"

"I don't know," said point guard Sue Bird of UConn fame. "But I don't think you'll ever see another team as deep."

Good point. All too often in this day and age, coaches and players flat-out insult our intelligence by uttering such pronouncements as "There's no drop-off when we go to the bench." It is almost always a ridiculous statement, unsupportable by any available evidence.

Well, here was a game with dazed Australia in which that statement was at least partially true. When Anne Donovan called upon her substitutes, there was no drop-off. In fact, there was an improvement.

And here is some irrefutable evidence.

Australia was leading by a 10-8 score when substitute Tamika Catchings scored on a low-post turnaround. Those were the first 2 of 28 consecutive American points scored by players who had not started the game. By the time Lisa Leslie broke that run with a layup, Team USA was up by a 36-21 score. Yup, 28 straight points by subs. There isn't another women's team in the world that could dream of such a thing.

"I was aware of it," acknowledged Bird, whose "substitute," Kara Lawson, had a spectacular game with 15 points on 5-for-5 shooting. (A Tennessee Vol upstaging a Husky. What would Geno say?) "I didn't know the numbers. I just knew we put the subs in there and the score went up."

The US depth was so overwhelming that Diana Taurasi, the high scorer in Thursday's semifinal triumph over Russia with 21, was basically a fouled-out non-factor. Another starter, Katie Smith, went scoreless. But with replacements such as Catchings, Lawson, Sylvia Fowles, Candace Parker, and Cappie Pondexter around, these things don't matter.

This was a long, miserable, forgettable night for the Opals, who had come to Beijing honestly believing they could end their career bagel (0 for 13, dating from 1967) against the US in World Championship and Olympic competition. They had played the US very tough in a rugged exhibition game three weeks ago (71-67), and in center Lauren Jackson and Penny Taylor they had two very good WNBA players who had earned a great deal of American respect.

But Taylor sustained ligament damage in her ankle during Australia's quarterfinal triumph over the Czech Republic, and though she tried gamely, she had little to offer in this game. Jackson finished with a team-high 20, but by the time she got going, the horse had long since fled the barn and was last seen running amok in the hinterlands. Jackson was weeping at the end. The 28-year-old center has been a WNBA champ and league MVP, but she's 0 for lifetime against the US in meaningful competition and she's getting tired of it.

If anyone deserved a good cry, it was Australia coach Jan Stirling. Her team never gave itself a chance, shooting an embarrassing 25 percent (19 for 76). Any time a team shoots as poorly as the Aussies did, the question always becomes, "Good defense? Or horrible offense? Or a little of both?"

The coach usually opts for the good defense theory, and Anne Donovan was front and center on that score.

"I'm really proud of our team for the way they played defense," she said.

"She challenged us about defense from Day 1," said Bird. "And I think it showed tonight. I think about the only way they scored was on second shots."

For the record, Australia did have 23 offensive rebounds, good for 18 second-chance points.

At the other end, the Americans were finding it so easy to score out of their set offense, and from transitions, and by getting to the line with aggressive forays to the hoop, that they hardly had to bother launching threes (2 for 6). This was good old-fashioned '50s and '60s basketball, before the damnable 3-pointer polluted the game with its fool's gold mentality.

The venerable Leslie (15 on 7-for-9 shooting) started off having her way in the low post, and so did Thompson, and so did Fowles and so did Parker, and, well, you get the idea. Having established the inside, the Americans then worked an inside-out game, which is where Lawson came in, scoring 11 of her points in the first half as the US took a 47-30 halftime lead.

It was never closer than 12 (57-45) in the second half, and when it got to that, the Americans had enough sense to start pounding it inside to Fowles and Parker, and soon it was back up to 20 at 69-49.

We are going to assume this was the last Olympic game for the 35-year-old Leslie, who was ready for the occasion with her three previous gold medals on hand. She revealed that she has been keeping them in her room, unlocked.

"I've never had any fear anything would actually happen to them," she said. "People here in China have the highest integrity. It was always my vision to have four gold medals around my neck here in Beijing."

Leslie fouled out with 6:33 left, which, in another time and place, might actually have mattered. Not here, not now.

"Lisa Leslie fouls out," says Bird. "Here comes Sylvia Fowles to replace here. Everything's OK."

A-OK, actually. If this isn't the greatest team of all-time, it's surely in the discussion.

Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com.