WNBA All-Star game, Kansas City Chiefs aim to get third-time lucky : NPR

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

And ultimately, it is time for sports activities.

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SIMON: WNBA All-Star Sport. And the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs go for a three-peat. Michele Steele of ESPN joins us. Michele, thanks very a lot for being with us.

MICHELE STEELE: You wager, Scott.

SIMON: And also you’re becoming a member of us from Phoenix. And thanks a lot. I do know it is early. The WNBA All-Star Sport takes place tonight. A twist – this time, one of the best gamers from the league are taking over the U.S. Ladies’s Olympic staff. There’s some overlap, is not there?

STEELE: Positive. The most effective 12 gamers within the nation will probably be there. They’re all representing USA Basketball. We’re speaking about Diana Taurasi and A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart. They’re all present WNBA gamers, they usually’ll be going through different present WNBA gamers who didn’t make the staff…

SIMON: Yeah.

STEELE: …The WNBA All-Stars. So it makes for some intriguing storyline, Scott.

SIMON: Effectively, and maybe essentially the most outstanding, Caitlin Clark, Iowa’s personal, now of the Indiana Fever, will play for the WNBA facet. She was not chosen for the Olympic staff. Is there a sub drama occurring there? She appears to have been on hearth ever since she wasn’t chosen to indicate the coaches that they may have been incorrect not sending her to Paris.

STEELE: You are proper about that. The primary three weeks of the season, she type of struggled, after which there was a second the place it appeared that she turned the nook. You recognize, in fact, this was an enormous controversy when it was introduced. Caitlin Clark, the largest star in girls’s basketball not getting the nod. I requested Caitlin Clark about this, and he or she stated, you realize what? I am not going to be motivated by that. I’ve a lot respect for Workforce USA. And it simply offers you motivation to make the staff in 2028.

Now, I ought to point out, although, Scott, the final time we had a recreation format like this – the WNBA All-Stars versus the Olympic staff – a participant who didn’t make the staff, Arike Ogunbowale, dropped 26 factors in that recreation.

SIMON: Wow.

STEELE: Beat Workforce USA and took dwelling the All-Star MVP.

SIMON: Oof. You bought an opportunity to interview the Diana Taurasi, who’s simply been named the highest WNBA participant thus far this century by ESPN. She’s going be on the Olympic staff tonight. She’s on the crest of historical past, too, is not she?

STEELE: She is – 42 years outdated. She’s the GOAT, best girls’s participant of this century, and he or she informed me that is her final rodeo for the Olympics. Now, it has been a wild journey. If the U.S. staff wins as anticipated, this will probably be her sixth straight gold medal, which is completely exceptional, Scott. However considered one of her teammates, Breanna Stewart, informed me that Dee, as they name her, stated the very same factor in Tokyo. So if anybody can do it in 4 years at 46, it could be her.

SIMON: NFL coaching camps opened. You had been in Missouri – or Missouruh (ph) – in that a part of the state. Two-time defending champion Kansas Metropolis Chiefs’ coaching camp. So what did you be taught from being within the orbit of Patrick Mahomes?

STEELE: Yeah. It is the warmth of July, so NFL coaching camps are getting underway right here. And it sounds unusual to say for a staff with Patrick Mahomes, however the Chiefs truly do have to get higher on offense. The protection carried that staff to the playoffs final yr. They actually did. So Mahomes is in a dorm room in St. Joseph, Mo., proper now, the place they’ve coaching camp, and he is placing his receivers by way of their paces. They need to win a 3rd Tremendous Bowl.

SIMON: Yeah. That might be a unprecedented achievement, would not it?

STEELE: Historic. By no means been completed.

SIMON: All proper. ESPN’s Michele Steele. Have an incredible weekend. Boy, you are going to be on the court docket the place it occurs. Good work.

STEELE: Thanks, Scott.

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