{"id":219670,"date":"2026-08-06T17:37:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T17:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/sue-bird-announces-u-s-womens-basketball-roster-for-2026-fiba-world-cup-exclusive-today-com\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T17:37:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T17:37:20","slug":"sue-bird-announces-u-s-womens-basketball-roster-for-2026-fiba-world-cup-exclusive-today-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/sue-bird-announces-u-s-womens-basketball-roster-for-2026-fiba-world-cup-exclusive-today-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Sue Bird Announces U.S. Women\u2019s Basketball Roster for 2026 FIBA World Cup: EXCLUSIVE – TODAY.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shop the Best of Nordstrom\u2019s \u2018Bigger Than Ever\u2019 Anniversary Sale<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Scott Stump
The U.S. women\u2019s national team is sending a powerhouse squad of the WNBA\u2019s brightest stars to play in the upcoming FIBA World Cup in Germany.
In a TODAY exclusive on Aug. 6, Naismith Hall of Famer and U.S. women\u2019s national team managing director Sue Bird announced the 12-player U.S. roster that will try to win USA Basketball\u2019s fifth straight title at the quadrennial event.
It\u2019s a who\u2019s who of the biggest names in women\u2019s basketball, led by four-time WNBA Most Valuable Player A\u2019ja Wilson<\/a> of the Las Vegas Aces.
Seven of the players from the 2024 U.S. Olympic team that stormed to a gold medal in Paris<\/a> are also on the roster for the FIBA World Cup. That group includes Wilson, veteran New York Liberty star Breanna Stewart<\/a> and Minnesota Lynx All-Star Napheesa Collier<\/a>, who recently returned from injury for the WNBA\u2019s top team.
Notable newcomers to the FIBA World Cup roster include Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark<\/a>, Dallas Wings guard Paige Bueckers<\/a> and Atlanta Dream forward Angel Reese<\/a>. They add an injection of youth and precocious talent to an experienced squad.
\u201cTwo years from now we\u2019ve got the Olympics,\u201d Bird said on TODAY. \u201cYou have to kind of always be thinking about the future while in the present, so what I love about this team, it\u2019s got experience \u2014 internationally, WNBA, you name it. It also has youth. You need both those energies. For the young players especially, they\u2019ll get really good experience.\u201d
Clark\u2019s omission from the 2024 Olympic team<\/a> sparked a debate about whether the immensely popular All-Star guard should have been part of the squad, but she will be on the floor in Germany.
Bird, who is a four-time FIBA World Cup champion and 13-time WNBA All-Star herself, knows there could be some complaints about which players did not make the FIBA roster.
\u201cYou always expect a little bit of it, right?\u201d Bird said. \u201cYou could probably put another roster of 12 in this World Cup, and they would be just as competitive. That\u2019s how rich USA Basketball is for women.
\u201cBut I think in terms of the critique and people talking about it, I view it as a good thing,\u201d she continued. \u201cIt\u2019s going to happen. It means people are paying attention, it means engagement, it means they care, so that\u2019s kind of how I look at it.\u201d
Bird views one team in particular as USA Basketball\u2019s main competition.
\u201cI mean, of course, France,\u201d Bird said. \u201cWe only won by a couple points in Paris (in the 2024 Olympics). They have a ton of talent. A lot of that talent is in the WNBA now, you can go watch them. Every time I watch a game and there\u2019s a French player playing, I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh Lord, it\u2019s going to be tough.\u2019\u201d
The U.S. team\u2019s head coach will be Olympic gold medalist Kara Lawson, a former star player who was an assistant coach on the 2022 U.S. team that won the FIBA World Cup title.
The FIBA World Cup features the world\u2019s top 16 national teams playing 36 games from Sept. 4 to 13 in Berlin. The U.S. team is in Group D with Czechia, China and Italy. The Americans are a combined 11-1 all time against those three nations in the FIBA World Cup, and their only loss came in 1967 against Italy. The top three teams in each group advance to the knockout round.
The U.S. women\u2019s national team has dominated international competition for years, which includes a 61-game winning streak and eight straight gold medals in Olympic play. They have won four straight FIBA World Cup titles, six of the last seven, and a record 11 overall.
The full FIBA World Cup roster for USA Basketball is as follows:
Scott Stump is a trending reporter and the writer of the daily newsletter This is TODAY (which you should subscribe to here!<\/a>) that brings the day’s news, health tips, parenting stories, recipes and uplifting stories right to your inbox. He has been a regular contributor for TODAY.com since 2011, producing features and news for pop culture, parents, politics, health, style, food and pretty much everything else.\u00a0
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLCApple\u00ae, Apple logo\u00ae and App Store\u00ae are registered trademarks of Apple Inc.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Shop the Best of Nordstrom\u2019s \u2018Bigger Than Ever\u2019 Anniversary Sale Scott StumpThe U.S. women\u2019s national team is sending a powerhouse squad of the WNBA\u2019s brightest stars to play in the upcoming FIBA World Cup in Germany. In a TODAY exclusive on Aug. 6, Naismith Hall of Famer and U.S. women\u2019s national team managing director Sue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":219671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}