Her hoop dream continues for Carla McGhee because, fortunately, there’s more to basketball than playing the game.
The Olympic gold medalist from Manual High School is a national treasure who helped forge the foundation for the WNBA and where women’s basketball is today.
McGhee — and the world — got a chance to reunite with her past with the ESPN 30 for 30
documentary “Dream On.” The three-part series unearthed more than 500 hours of video footage from USA Basketball to chronicle the forging of the 1996 team that won gold at the Atlanta Games and really brought women’s hoops into the spotlight.
And McGhee continues to live the dream these 40-some years since she first laced them up on Peoria’s South Side. “To this day I feel blessed because of a round piece of leather,” McGhee said on break from a speaking engagement at a girls empowerment summit in Idaho in early August. “Without basketball there is no way I would have this supreme experience.”

30 for 30

“Dream On” reveals the roles involved during the 10-month odyssey that Coach Tara VanDerveer used to turn the U.S. Women’s National Team into the U.S. Women’s Olympic Team. “There was a lot of pressure on us,” McGhee tells the camera in the reality-based format that mixed the archival footage with present-day recollections. “It was rough.”
The 6-foot-3 McGhee was a “banger” with bona fides after winning two national titles with the University of Tennessee. And her outgoing personality helped keep the team together. Almost every single quote from McGhee in the show is priceless.
“I was used to playing with guys. Guys treating me like guys,” she said from Idaho. “There was no room to be acting like a little girl.”
ESPN held a screening for the Dream Team in May, and allowed the players — Lisa Leslie, Sheryl Swoopes, Dawn Staley, Ruthie Bolton, et al — to revel in how far the women’s game has come. The WNBA just celebrated 25 years and the NCAA Women’s Final Four gets more and more popular each year.
“We talked about the resurgence in women’s hoops,” McGhee said. “We have the highest rate dropping out of sports. They want us to be ambassadors of the sport.”
“Dream On” painted a far bleaker picture for women’s basketball leading up to the ’96 Games. In 1992, the United States fielded perhaps the most famous team in history when it decided to include NBA players with Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird headlining the Barcelona Olympics.

Patriot games

USA Basketball wanted to build on that, but, “How much are we going to make? $50,000? What’s that going to do?” McGhee deadpans for the camera. “Is that before or after taxes?”
But they knew they were playing for more than money (and far less than the men). These young ladies were playing for the life of their sport. It was a golden opportunity, literally. So they put their country on their back and barnstormed for the Red, White and Blue.
Once the team was selected, it went on a 52-game world tour to showcase their talents.
“We were not trying to embarrass anybody,” McGhee tells the camera, “but we wanted everybody to know this is the National Team. We are the best in the world.
“How dare you think you can come and play with us?”

Episode 3

Fun times. Episode 3 includes a mini feature on McGhee, from her days at Manual, where she helped win a state championship with the Rams in 1986 to her college days with the Lady Volunteers. McGhee has a knack to keep things lively.
Like the time Bill Clinton called McGhee in her hotel room to ask her to be part of the Olympic Torch Relay. But the former class clown thought it was a joke, played along with some choice words for “Bill” and hung up on the 43rd president of the United States.
“I totally thought someone was playing a prank on me,” recalled McGhee, who the next day was in Washington, D.C. and apologizing profusely to the leader of the free world. “ ‘No, no, no, no. Don’t you call me President. Call me, Bill,’ he told me.”
And tragedy: “It was the first time I saw the car crash. I never saw the car accident,” McGhee remembered from the screening.
That was one of the reasons why President Clinton called McGhee — because of her incredible story. She was in a horrifying car accident in October of her sophomore year in Knoxville, Tenn. News crews were on the scene that Sunday afternoon so there’s video of first responders prying the bodies out of the smashed vehicles. “They identified me by my national championship ring,” McGhee explained to ESPN. “I had to look at a newspaper article to know what happened. I didn’t know I had been out for 47 hours in a coma. I didn’t know I had been in a five-car accident where I broke every bone in my face.”
Doctors didn’t know if McGhee could walk again, much less run or play basketball. But, low and behold, she was announced as a starter for the Vols for the first game of her junior season.
“I got goose bumps all over my body when I heard Pat’s voice,” McGhee said about seeing her legendary coach, Pat Summit, who died 2016, on the screen.

Living the dream

The dream continues for the
’96 Women’s Team. McGhee has travelled the globe playing the game and now preaching and teaching how basketball can help young girls achieve their dreams. She is currently in her third stint living in the Atlanta area, and her son, Chancellor Anderson, is playing overseas. “I’ve been given the gift of hoop, the gift of speech,” says McGhee, who credits her education in the schoolhouses and on the streets of Peoria for forming her work ethic with, “tough, constructive criticism mixed with love.
“Peoria isn’t a big place, but it’s not a small place either. We made a commitment to challenge each other. Peoria has produced too many good people.”
Player (“I can still play a good game of horse”), coach, trainer public speaker, ambassador, McGhee keeps it moving forward with her company More2hoopz, which is based in her hometown Alpharetta, Ga. And she spent a lot of time out West this summer with her sisters in hoop motivating the next generation.
That included a trip to her River City. McGhee teamed up with fellow Manual legend Jonelle Polk for a clinic at their alma mater this summer. “We want to give people a good experience,” said McGhee, who loves her hometown. “Whenever I come over the
(I-74) bridge, it never gets old.”
What’s next? How can we help? Most players in the NBA earn more in a year than all the players in the WNBA combined.
“We need more men behind the game — Girl-Dads,” McGhee prescribes. “Get more men jumping on the bandwagon. We got the women — same sex, different sex. We need the men.”
So the saga continues.
“The game is in good hands,” McGhee assesses. “We have great, impeccable women speeding the needle up. I am very excited about the game. We have them playing above the rim, below the rim, we celebrate the women’s game.”