KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- For Jennifer Azzi, this part of the country is home -- even though it really isn't her home anymore. It's both things at the same time. It's the place where she was born and spent her youth and the place where she -- as fate would have it -- played in her most important collegiate basketball game with Stanford.
But it's also a place that is very far from her current home in the Bay Area, where she is coach of the University of San Francisco women's basketball team. She no longer has family in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where she grew up. Yet, with memories, she remains forever connected.
It's a feeling most of us have experienced: To be somewhere right now but to also experience it as it existed in a past incarnation.
Azzi and her fellow members of the 1996 U.S. Olympic women's basketball team might find themselves doing some of that mental time travel this year. It's the 20th anniversary of the Atlanta Olympic Games.
Such reminiscing was happening for the members of the team and coaching staff who gathered to be honored as trailblazers at the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremonies this past weekend in Knoxville.
"There's life going on. To get all 12 of us at one time would be nearly impossible," Azzi said. "Certainly, I wish everybody was here."
In spirit, they were all present. The players from that gold-medal squad who made it to Knoxville along with Azzi were Sheryl Swoopes, Nikki McCray, Carla McGhee, Katy Steding, Ruthie Bolton and Venus Lacy. Those who couldn't make it: Dawn Staley, Lisa Leslie, Rebecca Lobo, Teresa Edwards and Katrina McClain.
The coach who got them into unbeatable shape -- and sweated every detail along the way -- was in Knoxville, and it was a chance for the players present to tell Tara VanDerveer that she had been right to be such a stern taskmaster in the nearly year-long preparation for the Atlanta Olympics.
"I said to Tara, 'This is the first time I've told you this, I think, but thanks for how tough you were,'" Bolton said. "If she wasn't pushing us and pressing us, I don't know if we would have won. She didn't want to leave any room for error.
"Sheryl and I were talking about this. We were thinking back then: 'Does it really take all this?' Maybe, maybe not. But Tara's mindset was: 'We're not taking any chances.'"
A mission completed
The 1995-96 U.S. team went unbeaten on a domestic and foreign tour leading into the Olympics.
"It was an incredible year," VanDerveer said. "I can think back, to the day, of what we were doing 20 years ago. It's that imprinted in memory. And with all the things that are happening now in sports, it's amazing that I did not have to have a one-on-one with any player about attitude, effort, anything. They all bought in at such a high level.
"They really cared for each other. They really worked hard. ... We did stuff that they had not had to do before, in terms of training. That was a time, I think, that women became proud of muscles. They became strong and fit."
"If she wasn't pushing us and pressing us, I don't know if we would have won. She didn't want to leave any room for error." Ruthie Bolton on how Tara VanDerveeer prepared the 1996 Olympic team
It's also interesting to note that most of the players on the 1996 team are still involved in the game.
"I think that a lot of us got into coaching shows a lot," said Steding, now the coach at Boston University. "Not just for our respect for the sport and our love of the game, but our respect and tip of the hat to the people who coached us ... who also gave their whole lives for the sport. I think it's important to carry on the legacy."
Steding said she has one of the posters of the 1996 team in her office.
"The kids come in and look at it and go, 'Which one's you?'" Steding said with a laugh. "But they appreciate a sense of history. Like, 'Before you were born, this was going on. The league that you watch in the summertime was because of this.'"
Knoxville is special to several of the 1996 Olympians in another way: It's where Stanford won the program's first NCAA title in 1990 under VanDerveer, with Azzi and Steding as seniors.
"I still feel at home here," Azzi said. "I had such a great childhood here. I learned how to work hard. There were so many incredible people here. And to top it off, winning a national championship here was pretty nice too."
#legacy Members of the 1996 @TeamUSA 🏅🇺🇸🏀 team honored tonight! #wbhof2016 @wnba pic.twitter.com/61AbSleqOu
— USA Basketball (@usabasketball) June 11, 2016
Azzi keeps in close contact with VanDerveer, and their teams met in the NCAA tournament in March. One of Azzi's favorite funny memories of being on the Olympic team is the Pert shampoo commercial she did afterward.
"Everybody made fun of me swinging my hair around," Azzi said. "And my current team found it on YouTube."
As for who would win a H-O-R-S-E contest among the 1996 team members now, Azzi said Georgia grad Edwards because she is so fiercely competitive at everything.
The circumstances of 1995-96, Azzi knows, will never be repeated, with the United States having so long to prepare and bond before the Olympics, and with the players knowing the fate of pro women's basketball in this country was resting in large part on their performance.
"The mission was greater than anybody's individual performance," Azzi said. "Years later, no one remembers who did what. It's really about all of us having a gold medal and changing history."
Reunited
McGhee played for Pat Summitt at Tennessee and won NCAA titles in 1987 and '89. She now has a business in the greater Atlanta area that helps train young players for collegiate futures. She said she crosses paths with Staley and McCray, a fellow Tennessee grad, a fair amount in their roles running South Carolina women's hoops program.
But McGhee was very excited to have the chance to meet with others from the 1996 team whom she hadn't seen in awhile.
"Every time I see Tara, I am reminded that I had the opportunity to play for such a great coach. ... I got good training from Pat. I'm like, 'How did I get so lucky to have both of them?'" Carla McGhee on Tara VanDerveer and Pat Summitt
"I'm like a kid in a candy story," she said. "You know that nervous energy you have at Christmas? That's what it's like when I see anybody from the '95-'96 ... people say 'team,' but I say 'experience.'
"Every time I see Tara, I am reminded that I had the opportunity to play for such a great coach. She knew I was one of those players you could do anything to, and they would stay loyal. I got good training from Pat. I'm like, 'How did I get so lucky to have both of them?'"
McGhee has a new connection of sorts to Azzi and VanDerveer. McGhee's son, Chance Anderson, is a 6-foot-7 freshman forward headed to play at San Francisco this fall.
"Tara told me she's right down the street. She'll check on him and go to his games," McGhee said. "And Jennifer is right there. I'm so proud of him. He knows how important it is to have a relationship with the staff and to love the school. He wants to be a pro someday."
Lacy, who helped lead Louisiana Tech to the 1988 NCAA championship, lives in her hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and has a 13-year-old son who plays football. Lacy was the last player added to the '96 Olympic squad, and she speaks of her time with the team in quiet, reverential tones.
"I'm just happy to have been a part it," she said.
Bolton, an Auburn grad, said, "Seeing everybody, it's like going back in time. I said, 'We need to do this more often.'"
Swoopes, who won the 1993 NCAA title with Texas Tech, echoed the sentiment. She went on to be a four-time champion and three-time MVP in the WNBA. Swoopes and Leslie, who won two league titles and was a three-time MVP, were the most successful of the 1996 Olympians in the WNBA.
This hasn't been an easy year for Swoopes, who has dealt with multiple player departures at Loyola in Chicago, where she is coach. But there was something restorative about the reunion in Knoxville.
"It was refreshing and well-needed," she said. "To be able to come back and share this moment with my Olympic teammates, it brought back a lot of memories.
"Along the way, you tend to lose contact with people because everybody gets busy and starts doing their own thing. But I hope this will make us all keep in touch, so it's not another 20 years before we get together again. Because what we did in 1996 was really special. I think it was the start of setting an expectation of what USA Basketball stands for and what we represent."