USA Basketball announced on Tuesday that Mike Thibault, Kara Lawson, and Joni Taylor will be the women’s national team’s assistant coaches as they compete for gold in the summer Olympics in Paris, 2024.
The USA Basketball women’s national team committee chose the assistants, who will work under head coach Cheryl Reeve. They are members of the same staff that supported Team USA in its gold-medal run at the 2022 FIBA World Cup in Australia.
USA Basketball CEO Jim Tooley said in a statement, “It’s exciting to have Mike, Kara, and Joni once again joining Cheryl and the USA Women’s National Team for the 2024 Paris Olympics after winning the gold in Sydney.” “Our staff has decades of diverse coaching experience and I’m looking forward to watching them lead our women’s team with the goal of winning an eighth consecutive Olympic gold medal.”
Thibault — an assistant on the 2008 Olympic team — is the winningest coach in WNBA history. He became a general manager of the Washington Mystics in 2022 after retiring. Conversely, Lawson and Taylor are both currently working as collegiate coaches at Texas A&M and Duke, respectively.
Coach Lawson led the United States’ 3×3 team to an Olympic gold in Tokyo after winning an Olympic gold medal in 2008 while competing for Team USA. In the previous year’s U19 World Cup, Taylor led the 2023 USA women’s under-19 national team to victory.
The United States national team will attempt to win its eighth consecutive Olympic gold medal and its 11th overall after earning a spot in Paris with its gold medal performance at the 2022 World Cup. It will be announced in the upcoming months who will be on the team.
