RIO DE JANEIRO -- They kept hearing they've been routing everyone because their competition is getting worse, and they kept politely trying to tell us we have it all wrong.
"It's a little bit disrespectful, really," said Diana Taurasi, one of the stars of the U.S. women's Olympic basketball team. And she's right. The lazy take is the American team met little to no resistance on the way to its sixth straight gold medal Saturday, when it steamrolled Spain 101-72, the same way it flattened everyone else it played in this eight-game tournament.
But the accurate explanation is the level of basketball the American women now play is as good, maybe better, than it has ever been. It showed when European champion Serbia tried to threaten them in group play, France tried to hang with them in the semis, and Spain began Saturday's gold medal game determined to make things uncomfortable for the U.S. The Spaniards banged into the American shooters and smacked into their rebounders early on, unworried about the hard fouls that came with knocking them to the floor.
It didn't matter. None of it mattered.
Afterward, you didn't need to be fluent in Spanish to piece together what the Spaniards' head coach, Lucas Mondelo, was saying when he compared this team of Taurasi and Sue Bird, Tina Charles and Maya Moore, Brittany Griner and all the rest to the 1992 U.S. men's Dream Team of Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson. He didn't know that just a few days earlier, someone had asked guard Angel McCoughtry, one of the younger members of the U.S. team, a variation of the same question: Was this squad so dominant it deserved to supplant the '96 American squad of Lisa Leslie, Theresa Edwards, Tina Thompson and Dawn Staley in the public imagination as the best women's Dream Team there has ever been?
"Wait!" said McCoughtry, one of the 2016 team's blithest spirits. She brightened and asked, "Who does that make me? [Sheryl] Swoopes? Can I be Swoopes?"
McCoughtry is not quite Swoopes -- yet. But she is a two-time WNBA scoring champ and steals leader who stands out at both ends of the court, just as Swoopes once did. Bird, Taurasi and Tamika Catchings all joined Leslie on Sunday as the only four-time team gold medalists in American Olympic history. Fowles and Seimone Augustus won their third gold medals. By pulling together, this 12-woman squad of wall-to-wall stars extended the U.S.'s Summer Games winning streak to 48 games dating to 1992.
And, as Bird and Taurasi said, they did it by copying the example of the teams that started the streak way back when. As they walk out the door, they expect the younger players on this team to do the same.
Bird said when she, Taurasi and Catchings were the rookies on the 2004 squad that won gold in Athens, "We knew were on that team to learn, to see what it mean to represent the United States at an Olympic event. And to take the torch, and run with it. We were really lucky to have the older players, the veterans on that team, show us with their focus on how to play, and with their work. And what we saw was Lisa Leslie, Sheryl Swoopes, Dawn Staley, Tina Thompson -- I mean, these are Hall of Fame players -- and we saw them not care about points, not care about rebounds, not care about any stats on the stat sheet. They only cared about gold medals.
"We learned that from them. And I think, hopefully, we've done them proud as well, because that's exactly how we played each of the Olympics we've been in. We just go out there and try to win."
And still, great as past U.S. teams have been, even Bird and coach Geno Auriemma -- two folks who've been there, done that, and remain incredibly hard to please -- agreed Sunday that a U.S. team has rarely been more impressive than this 2016 Olympic squad.
This team's average margin of victory in the eight games it played was 36.6 points, or five more than the '96 club's margin.
This U.S. squad averaged 102.3 points, and allowed their opponents to score only 64.8, nine points per game less than the '96 squad gave up. The '96 Dream Team scored 100 or better in four of the eight games it played. This squad did it six times, and set a single-game record of 121 points scored in its opener against Senegal.
"I'm just really happy," Bird said. "We just did something really incredible. When you get together as a team and you know you only have a month to do something, it's remarkable in so many ways that we were able to put this together, and do it in a fashion that leaves no question mark. We put ourselves on the map as arguably one of the best teams [ever]. And we had fun doing it."
After they were finally done Saturday, they celebrated as if they really did believe nothing was guaranteed.
Elena Delle Donne, a first-time Olympian, laughed and said she kept touching the medal around her neck again and again "just to make sure it's still there." Augustus did a Usain Bolt imitation and shot an imaginary arrow toward the crowd, and the 6-foot-8 Griner, who was also playing in her first Games, sought out the 6-1 Auriemma and lifted him completely off the floor in a postgame bear hug, then comically held him there for a bit with his legs dangling a foot off the ground.
"Yeah, it was a long way up for him -- I need to ask him, 'You OK there? You getting a little woozy?' " Griner said jokingly.
Auriemma later broke down crying when Taurasi, whom he's known since she was 17, hugged him too and told him she could have never accomplished everything she has without him.
"Not bad for two immigrants," said Taurasi, whose mother was born in Argentina and father in Italy, same as Auriemma was before emigrating to the United States.
Auriemma is used to hitting new heights. After he'd movingly praised Catchings, Taurasi and Bird for all they've meant to the U.S. program, after he touted what terrific players Fowles and Della Donne, Charles and Maya Moore, Lindsey Whalen and Breanna Stewart had all been, he was asked what he sees happening to the U.S. program going forward. And he said he hoped Delle Donne, Stewart and Griner had been paying close attention, because now it's their turn to carry the torch.
Basketball is cyclical, Auriemma said, praising the teams from France, Spain and Serbia by name, and predicting Australia, Russia and Brazil will rise up again. "Right now," he said, "we're at a real high level that maybe no one has ever seen before. That's not necessarily because they [the rest of the world] got weaker. Women's basketball just keeps getting stronger and stronger and stronger in the U.S. If you took us out of this tournament, this would be an amazing tournament. Amazing," he insisted.
Smirking now, Auriemma added, "Unfortunately [for the rest of the world], we're not going anywhere."