The numbers are simply stunning. The U.S. women’s basketball team, which beat Spain 101-72 on Saturday to win the gold medal in Rio, have now won six straight Olympic golds and 25 consecutive Olympic hoops games by double digits. At the Rio Games, the average margin of victory for the U.S. was 38 points. And it’s been this way for a long time. The U.S. women last lost an Olympic basketball game in 1992, when they fell to the Unified Team, a concoction of Russia and other ex-Soviet Union republics. Such sustained dominance has given rise to a tired question: is the American team too good? And does their overwhelming success hold the women’s game back around the world, since the blowouts can diminish fan interest and discourage other nations from trying to keep pace. After all, gold medal games are supposed to be dramatic affairs, not almost 30 point routs. Please. Few Olympic storylines are deserve a moratorium more than this one. U.S. coach Geno Auriemma, who has become an expert a fielding these queries during his day job at the University of Connecticut––where he’s won the last four national titles, and 11 overall––wonders why Michael Phelps doesn’t receive such scrutiny. “We got a guy in the pool with a USA swim cap on who nobody can beat,” Auriemma said . “And if he wasn’t in swimming, there would be a lot of other guys with gold medals. So, it is what it is.” To Auriemma, there’s an unfair implication that a dominant men’s t
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