Golden State Valkyries & Atlanta Dream are in the WNBA finals, two of the best defensive teams in the league. The first game met the defense-forward narrative. Back in June, Kiah Stokes blocks a shot by Angel Reese. Photo from San Jose Mercury News.
The Best Defense Is a Good Offense…
That’s what they say. Lead with offense and defense will take care of itself. They also say:
Irresistible force meets the immovable object…
But offense, the irresistible force, gets most of the credit. So what happens if you build a team–a basketball team in particular–around defense? What happens if you recruit two-way players, athletes who are almost equally good at preventing scoring as they are at scoring? If you find ways to rotate the defense fluidly, to move players in and out of the game by having everyone on the bench play with ease, to slow the game down, block the shots, scramble after balls until your defense creates your offense?
The answer is that you don’t appear in any of the stats. But you appear in the finals. With a chip on your shoulder.
Uruguay on the southeast coast of South America, nestled between Brazil and Argentina. Graphic from worldatlas.
Fast Facts
Named for: The full name is the Oriental Republic of Uruguay because it is the country called “bird-river” east of the “bird-river” river. Is that River cubed?
Capital: Montevideo
Long/Lat: 34.5 S/56.1 E, 6,000 miles east of Castro Valley, 10 hours.
Population: 3.5 million or 53 Castro Valleys
Size: 68,000 sq mi or 3700 Castro Valleys
Avg temp in April: 75 F/22 C, getting cooler since winter is coming in June
Main industries: Cattle & Sheep, telecom, energy production
Uruguay is the South American country that I always forget. It’s neither land-locked nor mountainous, like Paraguay or Bolivia. It wasn’t the site of ancient pyramids or the discovery of the potato, like Peru. It’s just hanging out there between those giants, Brazil and Argentina. As we’ve seen with many of these small countries, they often act as a buffer zone, a between area that is influenced by its giant neighbors.
The early Uruguay people included extensive settlements built by the Charrúa, Chaná, and Guaraní tribes, whose villages dated back at least 13,000 years. There are barrows called tumuli sprinkled throughout the country, which has rolling hills and greenery. The people lived in lands of plenty, but lacking gold or ores which Europeans sought. When the Spanish and Portuguese came–with they both did–the colonizers focused more on Brazil and Argentina.
Still, they did establish colonies in Uruguay. The first European to get credit was Juan Díaz de Solís. Curiously, there are debates about whether he was Spanish or Portuguese; both countries claim him and spell his name two different ways. One story also suggests that when his ship left home, his wife was found dead, so maybe he was using an alias.
Shiffrin wins a second slalom gold, four Games later. AP Photo/Marco Trovati.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat. They’d been here before. I’ve written about this before. More than once. These Games have happened before. This Olympic thing, this redemption thing, is like a video on a loop playing a story on repeat. It’s built into the competitions. It’s the nature of the beast. It’s why the Olympics is a gift that keeps on giving.
The Greeks created the four-year interval, back when lifespans were shorter. They had a Games every year, but only one Olympiad to honor Zeus. It must have been the same, with veteran athletes returning after a loss to win. If they survived the wars, disease, injuries, and other calamities of 750 B.C.E.
The Winter Games are a particularly brutal place for athletes to perform. Landing on the wrong part of a blade, tipping your ski into the wrong side of the pole, or twisting a curling rock just a little too much can crush medal hopes faster than a boot on an ant. What makes them even harsher is that you may have waited four years to glide away from center ice or launch down that hill, only to see all that work erased in a second. Then, it’s time to make hard choices; can you go back to training and wait out that four years for one more chance?
