Two years ago, while the WNBA was at the beginning of its meteoric rise, the young players who were helping women’s basketball reach a new level of popularity were absent from the national team for the 2024 Paris Olympics. The team won gold, but some saw it as a missed opportunity for USA Basketball to highlight some of the biggest names in the sport, even if they were younger.
In 2026, this is an American basketball roster that any casual fan will recognize.
To be clear, USAB, under new general manager Sue Bird and new head coach Kara Lawson, has not sacrificed talent for popularity. But the four new faces making their debuts for the senior national team – Aliyah Boston, Paige Bueckers, Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese – will bring a lot more eyes with them.
The team released its World Cup roster Thursday morning, and the quartet of youngsters highlights an absolutely stacked USA roster that also includes (in alphabetical order): Napheesa Collier, Kahleah Copper, Chelsea Gray, Rhyne Howard, Kelsey Plum, Breanna Stewart, A’ija Wilson and Jackie Wilson. All were Olympians in 2024, although Howard was on the 3×3 team while the other seven were on the five-on-five team.
The FIBA World Cup will be played in Berlin from September 4-13, while the WNBA will take a break for competition from September 1-17.
The national team always tries to bring new blood into each cycle; Bakar was one of six players who made their FIBA debut at the 2022 World Cup, and three of them (Bakar, Sabrina Ionescu and Alisa Tomas) made the Olympic team.
Before her first camp as general manager, Bird stressed the importance of opening the pool. “This is a new cycle,” she said in December. “We have a lot of new stuff, so you just want to get as many people as possible to give them a chance to show off.”
The difference with this group of players is the potential of each of them to be the leader of the national team at some point in their career. Boston, Bueckers, Clark and Reese are all 24 years old, giving them a long shot at being the faces of USA Basketball like Bird and Diana Taurasi before them, and currently Stewart and Wilson.
It’s a special generation of players. When Clark was a member of the USA Youth National Team, she remembers Carol Callan, USA Basketball’s national director at the time, telling the younger members that one or two of them might end up on the senior national team. Now, she’s heading into her first senior competition with two players she’s already matched up with (and won gold) at the U-19 level: Bueckers and Boston.
Although there are many, according to Bird, novelties, the new guard is already following in the footsteps of the national team’s culture of participation. Whether they are new to the senior team or not, each player on the World Cup team has sacrificed parts of their offseason to attend USA camps and competitions in college and as professionals. Reese persevered through the U.S. system despite not making the team until 2023 (she was a finalist for the U-17 and U-19 rosters before being cut), and now she’ll wear the red, white and blue at the country’s second-biggest international tournament.
The commitment to USA Basketball is even more impressive in 2026 given the timing of the World Cup. Eleven of those players are currently in playoff positions in the WNBA standings (with Plum’s team fighting for a spot) and will have to play in postseason games two weeks to the day after the World Cup Finals.
Clark, Boston and Collier have all dealt with injuries this season — Collier was available for just four games for 2026 — but all are forgoing a potential 17-day layoff to fly around the world and compete for a gold medal.
Anyone who has ever been part of the US program understands the standard that must be met. The national team is not something you can fall into in the Olympic years; regular attendance is not only rewarded, it is expected. If any of the four players had prioritized their W teams over this tournament, Sonia Citron, Kiki Iriafen and Cameron Brink would have been waiting in the wings to take their spots. College stars JuJu Watkins, Mikayla Blakes and Sarah Strong, among others, are coming to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Even if USA Basketball appears to be turning the page with this roster, there’s no guarantee how long this chapter will last. Clark and Bueckers have historically been a cut above every other rookie in the WNBA until Lynx rookie Olivia Miles came along, and they didn’t. America’s talent pool is too deep for him to ever feel secure in his place on the national team.
It is a well-deserved and long-awaited honor for Boston, Bueckers, Clark and Reese to join the senior national team. While there are some interesting omissions — for example, Kelsey Mitchell has never been a part of the USA Basketball system, and Ionescu was at the last camp in April and part of the 2022 and 2024 teams but is not on this list — this 12-man squad is pretty clearly the best the country has to offer. Whatever politics may have plagued the decision-making process in the past does not seem to be in play now.
Maybe that’s the new leaf USA Basketball is turning over. This is a team devoid of controversy, but full of star power and production, just the way it should be.
