PARIS, France — No. 1 draft pick. Rookie of the Year. Two WNBA titles. And in 2021, Seattle Storm star Jewell Loyd won her first-ever gold medal.
"It's just kind of like a relief. You do so much, you sacrifice so much for basketball. To have had that moment at the highest honor as an athlete, it's tremendous,” Loyd told KING 5.
Three years later, Loyd is playing like an MVP.
She’s back at the Olympic Games, competing for another gold medal. The USA women's 5x5 basketball team beat Japan 102-76 on Monday, July 29. USA faces Belgium Thursday, Aug. 1.
"It's pretty surreal. ... You kind of think of the Olympics as a one-time and a lifetime opportunity where you're like, 'I don't know if it's gonna happen.' You might have it as your goals but you achieve it once, like this is awesome," she said. "You get selected twice and it's like, 'No way. Hey, now it's pretty cool.'"
Loyd said it’s also pretty cool playing on a women’s basketball team that has won nine of the last 10 gold medals.
Expectations in Paris are high, but she said that’s what you get when you put on a Team USA jersey.
"There's not a pressure to always just be perfect, but there's a pressure to come out and compete," she said. "Having USA across your chest, it's letting people know that we are the best in the world. We want to have that and we know that. So regardless of just scoring, it's how we play and how we play the game of basketball and we take a lot of pride in that."
At the Tokyo Olympic Games, Loyd averaged five points, two assists and 18 minutes per game. In Paris, those numbers should all be on the up.
"It's an honor to understand the shifts of your role based on [when] personnel is different," she said. It's Team USA's defense and energy that sets them apart, she said. "You have to be willing to change a little bit to adapt and bring that, and I love doing that. I love having a different role."
When Loyd was a kid, she thought she would be playing tennis at the Olympics one day.
She was a very competitive tennis player in high school. She hopes that during her off days, she can head to the iconic Roland-Garros tennis stadium to watch matches with her dad, who is still a high school tennis coach in Illinois.
Loyd said her mom loves to play pickleball, but as of this summer, pickleball has yet to be added to the Olympic Games.