But we were all in it together, in a very professional way. It was a sisterhood with a level of trust and respect that I had never experienced before.The legacy of the 1996 womens bas

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. Cheap San Francisco 49ers Jerseys . -- New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady said he feels like he is in a good place with a week to go in his four-game NFL suspension and added that one of the biggest areas of concern for him when he returns to the team Oct. 3 is getting his timing back.I dont think there is any benefit to watching the team play these games from a football standpoint, because it takes time to get the timing and the practice reps, Brady said during his weekly interview on Westwood One Radio when asked whether there has been any upside to serving the suspension stemming from Deflategate.Im trying to do the best I can to stay in shape and to keep the timing, and to really stay football ready. Im hoping our team has a great week of preparation and can get to 4-0, and then Ill have an opportunity to be back next Monday, and Im going to work as hard as I can to be ready to go for that week. Its a big week for me, and its a big week for our team. Every week is a big week in the NFL, but not having been out there for four weeks, there is a lot of makeup time Im going to need and the chance to be on the field with my teammates to see what kind of rhythm I can find in a short week of practice.Brady was asked by host Jim Gray how he can possibly make up the time away from the game.I dont think you can, he answered. I do admire some guys, like [Patriots receiver] Danny Amendola. He didnt practice at all in training camp and he goes out there and the first week of the year [and] has a great game. The second week of the year, he has two touchdown catches. Ive played with a lot of teammates who have been off for extended periods of time and it looks like theyre flipping the switch, but I think for me, thats not the way I really prepare. I like to take every rep in practice. I like to practice every day.Ive been able to be very healthy over the course of my career, and I think that has really helped me, and Im going to need to find that rhythm back. Its going to take some work and some time. Like I said before, thats some uncharted territory, too.Brady then turned the focus to Sundays home game against the Buffalo Bills, saying, Its always a tough opponent for our team. Hopefully we can get to 4-0; thats what I would love to see showing back up next Monday morning in the football building.Looking back, Brady called the teams 27-0 victory over the Houston Texans on Thursday inspiring to watch.It certainly doesnt surprise me the way the team has performed and what they did on Thursday night, because theyre always so well prepared and they take advantage of short weeks, he said on the program. I was so happy to see them come out and play as well as they did. They played well in every area of the game. It really took contributions from all three units.Its tough to play on those short weeks -- your body obviously feels different than having seven days to play between games, but to see the team come out and rally against a really good Houston team was inspiring to watch. It was a great way to get to 3-0.Brady also lauded coach Bill Belichick. Asked whether he thought Belichick is the best coach in the history of the NFL, he said, Yeah, I definitely think so.I think whatever hand hes been dealt, he finds a way to win, Brady said. Thats the mark of a great coach. Sitting in those meetings for the last 16 years and watching him prepare the team, theres no [other] coach Id ever want to play for. Hes just remarkable in every aspect. Its a privilege to play for him. I look forward to being back out there and getting yelled at by him.Brady cited Belichicks consistency as something that stands out in his approach.Its just whats remarkable, and its so much of what you dont see on these Sunday afternoons, Brady said.In addition, Brady confirmed he spent the weekend in Italy with his wife, Gisele Bundchen.We had a great time. It was a great chance to get away, he said. Ive never had an opportunity in September. Hopefully I dont have one for a very, very long time. Cheap Houston Texans Jerseys . They reached the 100-point plateau for the fourth time in five games, bested the visiting Trail Blazers by 34 in the paint and scored 19 of the final 25 points in regulation. Cheap NFL Jerseys China . Now that hes hitting streaking teammates with pin-point passes for easy layups, Love is asserting himself as one of the true superstars in the league. http://www.wholesalejerseysnfloutlet.com...k-jets-jerseys/ . Here are his mid-season NBA awards. MVP: (KEVIN DURANT-Thunder) - Has been sensational this season and more importantly, the most consistent player in the league. Considering that his team has been without star guard Russell Westbrook and with the free agent departure of sharpshooter Kevin Martin, hes had to carry the majority of the load to not only keep his team afloat but more importantly, at an elite level. Jennifer Azzi couldnt eat. The 1996 Atlanta Games were about to open for the U.S. womens basketball team, and food was the last thing on her mind as she sat next to Lisa Leslie for breakfast in the Olympic Village.I just had this nervous excitement, and then I look over, and Lisa couldnt eat either, Azzi said. We were all just so over-the-top excited.U.S. national team director Carol Callans memory drifts to a different point that day, when the teams bus pulled into the parking lot of the Georgia Dome.It was a school-girl level of excitement, Callan recalled. People were screaming on the bus. Theyd been playing and training together for a year, and it was time to see the end result.As the U.S. womens team prepares to begin its quest for a sixth consecutive gold medal in womens basketball in Rio, the groundwork laid by the groundbreaking team of 1996 has never been more evident.That team readjusted the balance of power in the world, USA Basketball coach Geno Auriemma said. Starting 20 years ago to today, theres never been a more dominant team in the Olympics in any sport than the U.S. womens national team.The 1996 Olympic womens basketball team accomplished things that had never been done by preparing in a way that had never been done. For the first time in program history, the womens USA Basketball team trained and played together for nearly a year in preparation for the Olympics. In the end, that group made more than history, going 60-0 (52-0 in pre-Olympic competition and 8-0 in the Games) and capturing one of the most visible gold medals in an Olympics that was a marking point because of the overwhelming success of female athletes.The 1996 team created stars in players such as Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes, set a new bar for the level of play in womens basketball, and launched two professional leagues, including the WNBA, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this season.Callan calls the creation of the 1996 team, and in a way, all that came after, a perfect storm.The womens college game was growing in popularity, as Connecticut won its first national championship in 1995 and had a burgeoning rivalry with Tennessee. The NBA was exploring a business model for professional womens basketball in the United States and was willing to put some money behind the USA womens team as a marketing project.The U.S. team was coming off a pair of disappointing performances, finishing with bronze at the 1992 Barcelona Games and at the 1994 world championship.We knew we had to make some changes, Callan said. We created a program that allowed the team to train together over a sustained period, like the rest of the world does.USA Basketball convinced Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer to leave her program for a year to coach the team. It assembled a roster mixed with veteran players such as Teresa Edwards, who had been playing for years in anonymity overseas, and young guns such as Leslie and Dawn Staley, who were best known for their NCAA résumés and were about to break through on a different level.USA Basketball scheduled a years worth of exhibitions, a 22-game college tour that introduced the team to the country, and a full slate of international games to prepare the U.S. womens basketball team for international competition. A handful of those games were on national television.The college tour began in Atlanta, with VanDerveer taking the players to the Georgia Dome and asking them to visualize their place on the medal stand.In between games and trips, there were autograph sessions, photo shoots and media interviews. There was no social media. The players were tightly bonded and exceedingly focused.It was almost like we were still girls waiting to become grown women, Edwards said. We grew up really fast, and the grown-up part of us allowed us to be great basketball players.But the kid part of us really enjoyed each others company. We laughed so much. We messed up each others hair and fixed it back. We paid for each others dinners. Wed send room service to the wrong rooms. We had fun. But when it was time to play, we killed each other. We brought the best out of each other.Azzi remembers a day when the U.S. women practiced at Georgetown while legendary coach John Thompson stood on the sideline and watched. Thompson came into the huddle at the end of practice to address the team.You are making people respect you, he told them, and the compliment stuck with Azzi and her teammates.We showed peoplee a different level of basketball, Azzi said. Cheap Los Angeles Rams Jerseys. . No one had seen professional womens basketball in the States. We would go into college arenas, and teams thought they were going to be able to beat us. We were beating national championship teams by a significant margin. It was the first time for people to see the game played by women at that level.Once-in-a-lifetime opportunityThe legacy of the 1996 team goes beyond the history that was written, the ripples of that seminal experience casting off in all directions. They established professional basketball in the United States, cementing a place for pro womens team sports in the landscape. To the players on that team who eventually would go on to coaching careers, such as Staley (South Carolina), Azzi (San Francisco), Swoopes (formerly of Loyola) and Katy Steding (Boston University). To the influence over the U.S. teams current batch of stalwarts such as Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird and Tamika Catchings. To the other side of the country to the coach who cemented her own Hall of Fame legacy without taking home a medal.Coaches dont receive medals in the Olympics, so while the players stood on the platform after beating Brazil in the final in front of nearly 33,000 fans that last day, VanDerveer stood just off to the side. She didnt need a medal to realize shed created a gold standard.VanDerveer was demanding, unrelenting. She had the most talented roster in the history of the game, and she wanted those players to give her everything, from the first game to the last. After all, she was giving significantly as well.VanDerveer had resigned from her head-coaching job at Stanford, taking the year away to not only lead the U.S. women back to the gold-medal stand, but to prime the country for professional womens basketball and to alter the culture of the womens national team program.It was a really difficult decision, said VanDerveer, who turned her program over to longtime assistant coach Amy Tucker and brought old friend Marianne Stanley in as co-head coach for one season. You put so much into your own program. The hardest part of it was having to resign for that year. But I recognized it as an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.People told VanDerveer she was never going to be able to go back to the college game after her experience coaching the best team in the world. Her name came up as a coaching candidate for the WNBA and the American Basketball League, which was going to have a team in San Jose and feature Azzi as its founding player. But VanDerveer never wavered about her commitment to return to Stanford.I was excited about going back, she said. I had learned things from the Olympic experience that I wanted to take back to my team.Twenty years later, VanDerveer is a member of the Naismith Hall of Fame and is on the cusp of reaching 1,000 career wins as a college coach. Many players on that 1996 team regard her as the best coach they ever played for.Ruthie Bolton knew that playing the Olympics on home soil had the potential to make or break womens basketball in the United States.There was so much at stake, Bolton said. We didnt want another feeling of sadness, agony and defeat. We made sure that didnt happen. Tara was preparing us to have a state of mind that was above and beyond. It was like going overboard a little, but we didnt want to leave any questions of whether we were ready.Azzi said that experience challenged everybody to the core.At one point, everybody had a meltdown, she said. But we were all in it together, in a very professional way. It was a sisterhood with a level of trust and respect that I had never experienced before.The legacy of the 1996 womens basketball team is one that changed the landscape of the sport, setting a tone for everything that came after.Players like Lisa and Dawn and Sheryl taught Diana Taurasi and Sue Bird what it mean to be on the national team, Callan said, and those players have taught the next generation.Seimone Augustus, who helped the United States win gold medals in 2008 and 12 and is in Rio for her third Olympics, had a poster in her room as a kid of the 1996 team.My dream, my goal, was to be like those strong women I saw in that poster, Augustus said. To be able to be a part of that legacy and tradition thats so rich in success and winning means a lot. 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