The news generated surprise this week: Kevin Love decided to get off the United States team at the last minute He will participate in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. A week after his debut, he gave USA Basketball little room to look for a replacement and the announced name to travel in place of the Cleveland Cavaliers player was even more surprising: Javale mcgee will be among the twelve North American basketball players who will go in search of the fourth title consecutive for their country in men’s basketball, something they haven’t achieved since the 1960s.
JaVale, Denver Nuggets man (he will be a free agent starting in August) has no experience playing for his country’s national team, but if he has someone very close to him who can explain what an event like the Olympics is about: Pamela Denise McGee, his mother, was made in Los Angeles 1984 with the gold medal that the pivot will try to achieve in Japan.
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That success achieved by the group that included McGee mother was historic for women’s basketball in the United States: it was their first Olympic gold lAfter losing to the Soviet Union in the final in Montreal 1976 (the United States did not participate in Moscow 1980). A 22-year-old McGee who dominated college basketball with the USC Trojans celebrated with her teammates, including Cheryl Miller, another of the Trojans who made a big impact in the history of American women in this sport. His sister Paula was not an Olympian but she was also part of those Trojans. They were of the first women to receive college athletic scholarships in his country.
Pam played pivot and dominated even more than JaVale in a career that after the Olympic Games took her as a professional to various countries around the world (with a small JaVale accompanying her) until she finished it in the WNBA, where she came to play in 1997 and 1998. Then she continued having fun with a ball and a ring: “I couldn’t beat one against one until I was 14 years old”, JaVale told once. JaVale’s father, George Montgomery, He also dedicated himself to basketball professionally (he was chosen in the second round of the 1985 NBA Draft, although he did not play in the league) but he separated from Pamela and was not present in raising his son, which is why He bears his mother’s last name.
The three of them aren’t the only professional basketball players in this story: Imani McGee-StaffordThe daughter of Pam and half-sister of JaVale, she was also a college athlete and played more than 120 WNBA matches between 2016 and 2019, when she decided to temporarily stop her career to study law. JaVale and Imani are among the many brothers who have played in the NBA and WNBA, such as Rudy and Marta Fernández, Candace and Anthony Parker, Ime and Nfron Udoka and Amir and Nia Coffey, but there has not yet been another case like that of Pam, a former WNBA player with children in the two professional leagues in the United States.
If there have been mothers of Olympic success then repeated by their sons or daughters like the one McGee will look for in Tokyo: Eva Szekely (Hungarian swimmer medalist in 1952 and 1956) and Hanni wenzel (1976 and 1980 medalist Liechtenstein skier) took the podium like their daughters Andrea Gyarmati (1972 medalist in swimming) and Tina Weirather (ski medalist in 2018). Without having climbed to the podium, that of Margarita Geuer, a member of the Spanish women’s basketball team in Barcelona 1992 and her son Willy Hernangómez (bronze medalist in Rio 2016) is the most similar case in basketball (in Tokyo will it be added? his other son Juancho to be an Olympian?).
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The McGee story was close to not being so. After have been tested on the Team USA campus prior to the 2010 World CupWhen he was 22 years old and the backup center for the Washington Wizards, it seemed that McGee would never come close to having a chance at his country’s national team, which is generally made up of stars with a much higher profile than he is. That is why the pivot was tempted by the possibility of adopting Philippine nationality, without blood ties with that country but with the possibility of being nationalized by decree to defend the colors of a basketball fanatic country.
heard from @coachot that d Phil national team is about to be formed. Would love to represent d Phils if given d chance
– Javale McGee (@JaValeMcGee) January 7, 2012
McGee was close to playing for the Asian country in the 2014 World Cup but an injury ended him running from that process and His colleague Andray Blatche was the NBA intern who ended up becoming a Filipino national: finally that ended leaving JaVale the chance to represent the United States at Tokyo 2020Perhaps at the time of his career when he least expected it.
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