Sabrina Ionescu Delivers Laughs With Story Behind Iconic Team USA Olympics Moment
New York Liberty star guard Sabrina Ionescu earned a gold medal with Team USA at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Through six games played in Paris, Ionescu averaged 5.5 points and 3.3 assists per game while shooting 40% from three-point range.
Ionescu also produced one of Team USA's most iconic moments, when she drained a deep three-pointer and emphatically shushed a hostile crowd in the final seconds of a group stage game vs. Belgium.
Exhibit A of why the point differential is so awesome…
— Josh Reynolds (@JoshReynolds24) August 1, 2024
The game is clearly out of reach for Belgium, yet you can hear the urgency from team USA’s bench to get a shot up at the end of the game. Sabrina Ionescu pulls the trigger from deep & hits the crowd with the Kobe silencer🤫 pic.twitter.com/UlUcgCSBEl
Ionescu made an appearance on "Late Night with Seth Myers" on Thursday. At one point, Myers asked what went into her shot and ensuing celebration against Belgium.
"So that was like 27,000 fans that came to support Belgium that game," Ionescu said. "They're 45 minutes away from Lille, where we played. They started booing us from the moment we came down to warm up. Like, it was a whole thing.
"And obviously, with USA Basketball, it's a whole point-differential thing," Ionescu continued. "So I kind of like looked at the bench, everyone was telling me to shoot it, and I was like, 'Alright, if you're not going to guard me from I'm shooting it.' And kind of just gave them the little, you know, silencer. It kind of just came. Wasn't planned."
The best way to quiet a rowdy crowd, according to Sabrina Ionescu (@sabrina_i20). pic.twitter.com/JcsESGIJpb
— Late Night with Seth Meyers (@LateNightSeth) August 22, 2024
Ionescu is referring to an Olympics rule that a tiebreaker can come down to a point differential between two teams; meaning, teams are incentivized to win by as many points as possible because it may help them with seeding down the line.
This is why Ionescu shooting (and draining) a deep three-pointer with a win for Team USA already in hand wasn't a showing of poor sportsmanship, and was instead just a clear message to the Belgian crowd.
Which makes her celebration afterwards even more iconic.
GRANT YOUNG
Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.