Before the season started, Dearica Hamby wrote her goals down on a basketball.
On the list was making the U.S. 3×3 Olympic team.
She didn’t initially achieve that because she wasn’t one of the four members of the squad chosen earlier this month. Now she can check that off after replacing Los Angeles Sparks teammate Cameron Brink, who tore the ACL in her left knee last week.
“My heart breaks for her,” Hamby told The Associated Press in an interview. “When she got the news she made it and I got the news I didn’t originally, we cried together. It’s kind of an ironic situation. I’m sure if she wanted to have anybody replace her, she’d want it to be me.”
She joins Hailey Van Lith, Cierra Burdick and Rhyne Howard on the squad that will compete at the Paris Games next month. The U.S. won the inaugural 3×3 Olympic gold medal in Tokyo in 2021.
It’s the second consecutive Olympics that the U.S. team had to replace one of its original players. Katie Lou Samuelson missed the Tokyo Games after she caught COVID-19 right before the Olympics. She was replaced by Jackie Young, who helped the team go on to win a gold medal.
Hamby said she was initially upset when she first didn’t make the roster, feeling she deserved to be on the team.
“I think that should have been something…
