August 18, 2024
How the Washington Mystics’ Olympians are approaching the rest of the WNBA season
Jade Melbourne, Julie Vanloo and Aaliyah Edwards are back after joys and disappointments in Paris
At Jade Melbourne’s first press conference with the Washington Mystics after winning an Olympic bronze medal with Australia, the 22-year-old point guard tried to play it cool. She brought her medal but kept it out of view until a reporter asked about it.
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“Nothing,” she said, unsuccessfully trying to stifle a smile as she pulled it out. “Nothing to see here!”
Ever since she got back, Melbourne’s teammates and the Mystics organization have celebrated her medal with her, including by honoring her and the team’s other Olympians in a pregame ceremony on Saturday. Staff members gave each Olympian their country’s flag to hold during the ceremony, and they needed a lot of them.
In addition to Melbourne, forward Aaliyah Edwards (Canada), point guard Julie Vanloo (Belgium), general manager Mike Thibault (assistant coach for Team USA) and head of athlete rehabilitation Kala Flagg (physiotherapist for Dominica) all participated in the Olympics.
Team USA won its eighth straight gold medal, Belgium fell to Australia in the bronze-medal game and Canada finished 11th. Melbourne was named the tournament’s Rising Star after starting all six games for Australia and averaging 7.0 points, 2.8 assists, 1.7 rebounds and 1.2 steals per game.
Now, all three Mystics players are back from the Olympics and contributing again in the WNBA, whether by turning the page from their experiences in Paris or using them as fuel.
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Before the Olympics began, the Mystics coaches spoke about how excited they were for Edwards and Vanloo, both WNBA rookies, and Melbourne, the WNBA’s youngest player, to get that international experience. This was Melbourne’s first Olympics and the second for the 22-year-old Edwards and the 31-year-old Vanloo.
“We want to see them go overseas on the biggest platform and play hard and compete,” assistant coach Ashlee McGee told The Next on July 13, speaking specifically about the point guards she mentors. “And I think that is the most important thing … for us and for them, to just be themselves. We don’t want them to be anything other than who they are and who we’ve helped them continue to become.”
For Melbourne, the Olympics became “the most amazing four weeks of my basketball career,” she told reporters on Tuesday. It didn’t start off how Melbourne and world No. 3 Australia wanted, with an upset loss to Nigeria to begin group play. But the Opals rallied with wins over Canada and France to advance to the quarterfinals.
Melbourne played well against Nigeria, scoring 11 points on 3-for-4 shooting in her Olympic debut. But she struggled against Canada and France, scoring just six total points and committing four turnovers.
The morning of Australia’s quarterfinal game against Serbia, now-five-time Olympic medalist Lauren Jackson approached Melbourne. “I just know you’re going to have a ripper today,” Jackson told her. Melbourne delivered with 18 points on 6-for-9 shooting, five assists, four rebounds and two steals, becoming the first Opal ever to have at least 15 points and five assists in an Olympic elimination game.
“What a game. That’s pretty impressive, wasn’t it?” Australia head coach Sandy Brondello said postgame about Melbourne.
“It was her coming-of-age game tonight,” Jackson added. “… She was incredible.”
Melbourne kept contributing in the medal rounds, notching seven points against Team USA in the semifinals and seven assists with only one turnover against Belgium.
“It’s great that she got that taste of success,” Mystics head coach Eric Thibault told reporters on Tuesday. “That was a big deal for that team. It’s kind of a new-generation Australian team … and she’s going to be a big part of that.
“So … it’s great to play those huge, high-pressure games with that kind of massive audience. I think she wants to play those games. That’s where she wants to go with her career. So there’s nothing like having to go through it and experience it, [the] highs and lows.”
Edwards and Canada experienced more of the tournament’s lows. Canada entered the Olympics ranked fifth in the world but went 0-3 and failed to advance out of group play.
“I’m super grateful for that experience because no one can take that away from you, and it’s experience for a lifetime,” Edwards told The Next on Saturday. “… Obviously minus the result, I still had fun.”
Edwards relished having a bigger role for Canada in Paris than she’d had in Tokyo, when she was the team’s youngest player and barely saw the court. This time, she averaged 3.3 points, 4.7 rebounds, 1.3 assists and 1.3 steals in 20.8 minutes per game.
Despite the disappointment of missing the quarterfinals for the second straight Olympics, Canada is optimistic about its future. Both Edwards and retiring Canada co-captain Natalie Achonwa pointed to the team’s youth and circled the 2028 Los Angeles Games as a potential breakout moment.
“We have a lot of young guns coming up in the program,” Edwards said, “and hopefully we’ll see in LA, I can be the lead of that. So I’m super excited.”
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Like Canada and Australia, Belgium struggled early in the Olympics. Ranked sixth in the world, the Cats played their group games in front of many of their fans in Lille, near the Belgian border. But just before the Games tipped off, they lost point guard Julie Allemand to injury and had to adjust.
The Cats began group play with a 14-point loss to Germany, then had a better showing in their next game but lost to the United States by 13. Those results required them to have a big performance in their final group game to make the quarterfinals, and they delivered, beating Japan by 27. From there, they beat Spain and lost to France in overtime to set up the bronze-medal game against Australia.
Vanloo played a big role for Belgium, averaging 14.0 points, 6.8 assists and 2.7 rebounds in 35.1 minutes per game. She was the Cats’ second-leading scorer behind former Mystics star Emma Meesseman, and FIBA named both players in its top 10 for the tournament.
But Vanloo saved her best performance for last: In the bronze-medal game, she poured in a team-high 26 points and 11 assists on 9-for-14 shooting, including 4-for-8 from 3-point range.
Vanloo said she got an added jolt of confidence when she saw Eric Thibault, who flew to Paris for the medal rounds, sitting in the stands to cheer on her and Melbourne.
“All of a sudden, you just look in the crowd and you just see the person that you really want to see,” she told The Next on Saturday. “… I just wanted to kind of show … what I’ve been working on this whole season [in] the WNBA with the Mystics. And it kind of came all together. I was doing layups left and right. I was shooting threes. I was passing the ball. It was a great balance of my game. Everything came to play.”
“She almost single-handedly won them that game,” Melbourne said. “She was unbelievable. … It was fun to match up against her, but I much prefer to be on her team and cheering for her making stepback threes and not against my team.”
After losing that game, Vanloo said she sat in her room with her best friend, recovering physically and decompressing mentally. She thought Belgium gained a lot of respect both domestically and globally during its Olympic run, but losing out on a medal stung. The only thing that helped was knowing that Melbourne, someone she’s become very close with in Washington, got the medal.
“I’m trying to look back with pride and not with disappointment,” Vanloo said. “It’s not always easy.”
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Playing in the Olympics meant that Melbourne, Vanloo and Edwards didn’t get the month off that other WNBA players did during the league’s Olympic break. Referencing all the Olympians who also play in the WNBA, Vanloo posted on social media on Friday about the “load and pressure we’ve been carrying” and how difficult that is.
But she said on Saturday that she wouldn’t have it any other way. When her parents asked her during the break whether she really wanted to return to the WNBA to finish the season, she said yes. She wanted to be around her teammates and the Mystics organization.
Each of the Mystics’ Olympians is approaching the rest of the WNBA season in a different way, but all feel ready to compete.
“I’m using my experience over in Paris as a motivator,” Edwards said, “to just keep pushing and staying confident, staying patient, and seizing the opportunity and living in the moment.”
Edwards has shown her all-around skillset in the first two games after the Olympic break. On Thursday, she had nine points on 3-for-4 shooting and three blocks. On Saturday, she didn’t shoot as well but put up seven rebounds, three assists and two steals.
For Melbourne, the goal is to continue to build on the dream month she had with the Opals and stay adaptable as she returns to a reserve role for the Mystics. On Thursday, she poured in 10 points on 4-for-5 shooting in just nine minutes. That was nearly double her average of 5.6 points per game before the break.
“She shot the lights out,” guard Shatori Walker-Kimbrough told The Next on Saturday. “That’s our rising star in Australia. That’s our rising star here.”
“She gave us a real boost,” Eric Thibault told reporters postgame. “I thought she kind of changed the game when she came in in the second quarter. … She just played with great energy and a real good presence at both ends of the floor.”
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And Vanloo’s approach to the second half of the season?
“I’m trying to figure it out myself,” she said.
She’s leaning on her awareness of her body and its needs, honed over many years playing around the world before coming to the WNBA. She said her body feels “surprisingly” good, and the Mystics medical staff has been helpful.
Though Vanloo has struggled with her shot in the first two games back, her teammates see the impact of her Olympic run. By her own admission, she deferred early in the season to her veteran teammates, not wanting to step on any toes. Her confidence and leadership grew over time, especially as she started 22 games in place of injured guard Brittney Sykes. According to Walker-Kimbrough, that culminated in Vanloo speaking up in practice on Friday, explaining how Belgium defends certain plays to help the Mystics figure out their approach.
“It was a small thing, but for me, it was a big thing,” Walker-Kimbrough said. “… In the first half of the season, she wasn’t really doing that. … Her going back home [for the Olympics], building that confidence or whatever she did at home, [now she’s] bringing that back over.”
That could potentially be a big thing, too, for the Mystics. At 6-21 and facing long odds to make the playoffs, one of their goals for the rest of the season should be to develop their younger players and those with less WNBA experience. The three Olympians all fall into those categories — and Paris could be a springboard for what comes next for them this season.
Written by Jenn Hatfield
Jenn Hatfield has been a contributor to The Next since December 2018 and is currently the site's managing editor, Washington Mystics beat reporter and Ivy League beat reporter. Her work has also appeared at FiveThirtyEight, Her Hoop Stats, FanSided, Power Plays and Princeton Alumni Weekly.
