With the gold in hand, Edwards left holding court

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By GARY SHELTON

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 1, 2000

SYDNEY, Australia -- When it was over, when all of it was over, Teresa Edwards lingered for a last look.

The game was complete, and the gold was won, and the greatness had long since been established. The requisite victory lap had been run, and the flags had been waved, and the embracing was done.

Give Edwards credit for this. She knows every step of the dance, and she enjoyed every one of them. She clung to each second like they were the last few grains of sand in her hourglass.

Once it was complete, however -- once she was complete -- she hung back until it was just her and a court, the way it used to be.

The Australian team already had left the floor, and one by one her American teammates faded away. Which was when Edwards, the grand old lady of U.S. basketball, walked to the middle of the court.

And sat down.

And remembered.

Such was the way a legend said farewell to the Olympics on Saturday. By sitting in the middle of the court, distanced from everything but her moment and her memories. As the fans filed away, as the workers brought out the medal stands, she sat there, soaking in the moment, savoring the last wonderful feelings of a game that has defined her life.

"I just wanted to be the last one off the basketball court," she said. "It just felt natural. I didn't want to make a spectacle of myself or draw attention myself. I just wanted to steal a moment."

After all this time, doesn't she deserve it? Five Olympics, four golds and a bronze. So many bounces, so many baskets. Once she was her country's youngest basketball Olympian. Four years ago, she was the oldest. Now, she is older still. The joke around the women's basketball team is that Edwards has been playing so long, her first medal was stone.

This was her final aria. Edwards and the rest of the U.S. women's basketball team captured the gold medal Saturday, blowing away Australia in front of a partisan crowd 76-54. For days the Aussie press had built this up as a match between equals, as if the homestanding Opals could play toe to toe with the Americans.

They couldn't. Even now, even after the establishment of the WNBA, even after the success in Atlanta, there remains an uncommon passion on the women's Olympic team you do not see on the men's. More than league titles, the Olympics remain the No. 1 goal for the women.

Much of that comes from Edwards, who has seen the growth of the game parallel hers over the past two decades. In the 1984 Games, in Los Angeles, Edwards didn't quite know where she was, and women's basketball didn't quite know what it was. It was a slower game then, softer. Now it has been forged into something strong, something special. As has she.

And so she sat, as if all the running and all the sweating was complete, and it was time for her to rest. When she was a girl back in Cairo, Ga., she sat on basketball courts all the time. She would talk her way into the gym, and she would shoot. And shoot. Sometimes the lights would be on, and sometimes they wouldn't. Edwards would aim at the basket time and again until her arms gave out. So she would sit. And rest until she could do it again. Then she would rest. Then she would shoot.

Thoughts like that come to mind at a time like this, when you are 36 and you are saying goodbye to the love of a lifetime. Basketball has been Edwards' best friend, her confessor, her therapist. If she came across an issue in her life, she would dribble it away. And now it is done.

"It felt like the last time," she said. "You just soak it in. I started to think about the past Olympics, about the people in my life who have helped me grow, about the people back home who are happy for you.

"It feels right. It feels like time to pass it on. Sitting on the bench was not that hard this time. When I was younger, that was a bad thing. You know when it's time to move on."

The sadness in Edwards' departure is that for most of her tenure, the women Olympians of the United States have been so much fun to watch. They have played hard, they have played defense, they have played as if the Games matter. When you see the men's team, the millionaires of the NBA, watching them, there is a temptation to run down and tell Vince Carter and Alonzo Mourning to watch, to learn.

Who knows what the future holds? If the money gets better in the WNBA, will the players pay less attention? Will they cruise the way the men do? With Edwards, you could be sure it wouldn't happen because she would, by gum, tell someone about it. After all, this was the woman who told the WNBA to take a flying leap. If Edwards feels it, other players hear it.

"I was born to play basketball," Edwards said. "Some people tell me I came too late. I was right on time. I had an impact on the game. I left a mark. Lisa (Leslie) and Sheryl (Swoopes) are great players, and they're going to have great moments. But I think the longevity and perseverance, the giving something back to the sport, is a bit more rewarding for me."

For the record, Ruthie Bolton-Holifield isn't buying any of this. She heard Edwards talk about retiring in '94, and again in '96. And here she was.

"I told her I don't believe her," Bolton-Holifield said.

"Ruthie knows better," Edwards said. "I don't think my body can do it anymore. I don't want to see myself struggle. I've always wanted to finish playing at a good level."

Gold is good. And even now, even in a diminished role, Edwards had a significant role. After all, she is the player the others call "Mom." She also is the player who saw something wrong before the quarterfinals and called a team meeting. She told them something simple. That people don't remember who scored. They remember the medal.

They also will remember Edwards standing on a podium, leaning over one more time so someone could hang a medal around her neck. Hey, she enjoys that. But on the last night of her basketball life, she preferred holding her own private ceremony, sitting solitarily at midcourt, seeing nothing, remembering everything.

She was there for several moments until teammate Dawn Staley came back to collect her. "Dawn thought I was going crazy," Edwards said, laughing softly.

It was only when Staley led her away the tears came.

"Let it come," Staley said.

"No," Edwards said, but the tears came anyway.

Of course they did. That felt natural, too, in the middle of these final, fantastic feelings, when a woman said goodbye to her oldest friend, when a game said goodbye to a legend.

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