Becky Hammon, Russia's American hoops star

For five months Becky Hammon heard - despite trying to avoid - her detractors' words.

They called her a traitor. They called her money-grubbing. They said, mincing no words, that Hammon, from America's heartland, should leave the United States and move about 5,000 miles to Russia, the nation for which she is playing basketball.

But Hammon doesn't read newspapers. She won't surf the Internet. She can't, she said, allow such negativity into her mind. Into her life.

So the stories trickled to her from family, from friends: This is what they're saying about you.

After five months of trying not to hear, on Monday, just days before her first Olympics, Hammon listened.

She listened, hand over heart, eyes on her flag - the red, white and blue - as "The Star-Spangled Banner" played before a basketball game between the United States and Russia, her team.

A month ago, Hammon said she wasn't sure how she'd feel when that time finally came.

When she would have to stand for another country's anthem. When she would have to hear her own, standing on the wrong side, an outsider looking in, with "Russia" in block letters across her chest.

On Monday, Hammon listened.

But her eyes, raised to the rafters, betrayed her.

Hammon will play in this month's Beijing Olympics not for her country, but as a naturalized citizen of Russia.

She won't be the only athlete crossing borders. J.R. Holden, a Pittsburgh native and Bucknell graduate, will play point guard for the Russian men. David Blatt, Princeton class of 1981, will coach Holden and the Russians.

But Hammon, with her bouncing blond ponytail and disarming smile, seems too perfect to play for a country that many Americans still find suspicious.

Even so, Hammon's decision, which was finalized via contract nearly four months ago, might have faded away like one of her trademark jumpers if not for one remark from U.S. coach Anne Donovan - a statement Donovan now says was blown out of proportion.

"If you play in this country, live in this country, and you grow up in the heartland, and you put on a Russian uniform, you are not a patriotic person in my mind," Donovan told ESPN.

Donovan played on gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic basketball teams - '84 and '88 - during the waning days of the Cold War.

On Monday, the Hammon-led Russians played Donovan's U.S. squad in the FIBA Diamond Ball tournament, an Olympic tune-up, in Haining, China. The United States won, 93-58. Hammon scored 10 points. Despite the lopsided outcome, Russia is considered a contender in Beijing.

Hakeem Olajuwon was naturalized as a U.S. citizen and played for the '92 Dream Team. Bernard Lagat, from Kenya, moved to America and will run in two track events. The difference between Hammon and Olajuwon or Lagat, many have said, is they live here, while Hammon has no intention of moving to Moscow.

So how could the all-American girl from Rapid City, S.D., play for the Russians?

Some said for money. (Hammon will be paid a bonus of $250,000 if Russia wins gold.) Some said revenge. (She was at best a long shot to make the U.S. team.)

Hammon said neither.

"I stopped praying for God to put me on that [U.S.] team," she said. "And I just said, 'Show me very clearly where you want me to go, what you want me to do: Open doors, shut doors, I'll go whichever way you open. If it's USA Basketball, I'll bury my little hatchet with them.' "

The only door that remained open, Hammon said, led to the Russian national team. She walked through.

But how, the question remains, did one of America's best players wind up in a Russian uniform?

Hammon, 31, went undrafted out of Colorado State. She scrapped her way onto the end of the New York Liberty bench, then shot her way into the starting lineup.

Although Hammon was a member of the '98 Jones Cup team while in college, she said she's never really been on USA Basketball's radar because of her less-traditional route to success: mid-level college program, undrafted out of school, slow climb to WNBA prominence.

A decade later, she's coming off a season in which she was runner-up for league MVP. Considering that the winner, the Seattle Storm's Lauren Jackson, is Australian, Hammon was the league's best American-born player.

Even so, the guards who have been earmarked for USA Basketball assignment - Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Kara Lawson and Cappie Pondexter - graduated from name-brand programs: Connecticut, Tennessee and Rutgers.

From '96 to '04, the point-guard spot belonged to Philadelphia-born Dawn Staley. The heir to that spot always seemed to be Bird, who played for Donovan for five seasons as a member of the Seattle Storm. Lawson played under Pat Summitt at Tennessee.

There just wasn't room, Hammon said, for a girl-made-good, especially not one trying to sneak in the back door.

Last June, Hammon signed a contract with CSKA, a club in Moscow. The contract, a multi-year, multi-million-dollar deal, broached the subject of Hammon playing for Russia's national team.

"It was in my contract to say, 'Would you agree if such and such plays out, you would play for our national team?' It wasn't until December or January of this year that I started seriously thinking about it."

The economic environment that has produced Hammon's lucrative Russian contract - and others like it - is difficult to explain. Ann Wauters, Hammon's teammate on both the Silver Stars and CSKA club team, said it's an anomaly. A few rich Russian men have made women's basketball their hobby.

A year before the '96 Atlanta Olympics, USA Women's Basketball dedicated itself to reclaiming the top spot in the international pecking order.

After winning gold in '84 and '88, the U.S. team finished third at the '92 Barcelona Games and the '94 world championships.

USA Basketball changed its strategy. Instead of pulling the team together six weeks before opening ceremonies, it held a team trial 14 months before Atlanta.

Much like U.S. women's soccer during its World Cup-winning run in 1999, USA Basketball identified the '96 Olympics as a launching pad that could - if the team played entertaining and exciting basketball en route to a gold medal - push the sport into the American consciousness. The American Basketball League (ABL) and WNBA were set to launch, and USA Basketball needed to create buzz, especially with the '96 Olympics on U.S. soil.

The 12 members of that '96 team relinquished their overseas contracts and traveled exclusively with USA Basketball.

Carol Callan, USA Basketball director of operations, said such a thing could no longer happen, not with the top overseas contracts reaching more than $500,000 a season. Callan said one, possibly two members of the '96 team had overseas contracts worth six figures. And those were no more than $120,000.

"Women's basketball," Callan said, "has been shifting sands ever since."

Through the 2004 Athens Olympics, USA Basketball's selection process identified six to eight "core players," who, if they committed to the team's training and competition, would have a spot on the Olympic team. The other four to six were chosen from a variety of players who would attend different camps.

In 2006, USA Basketball realized two problems: The overseas options (like Hammon's Russian contract) were so lucrative that even though the core players said they could commit to core training, they couldn't justify leaving that money on the table. Also, at the 2006 World Championships – because of a car accident and injury – USA Basketball had to replace two players at the last minute. These replacements had not sufficiently trained with the team.

Moving forward to 2008, USA Basketball abandoned the "core player" concept in favor of a selection pool. This new selection procedure was submitted for Olympic approval. It's now a "living document," which, Callan said, USA Basketball "has to live with."

"Rather than starting with a core and working our way out, we decided we'd start with a larger national team, be as inclusive as possible because of everyone's overseas commitments, then select the team closer to Olympic time."

In March 2007, before Hammon's runner-up MVP season, USA Basketball announced a pool of 21 players. Hammon's name was not on the list.

Callan said this list was a starting point, and the system was designed to bring emerging players into the fold if they proved themselves worthy.

In September, Callan said, USA Basketball invited Hammon to training camp. Hammon said because of her overseas commitments, and the belief that her chances of making the Olympic roster were virtually nonexistent, she declined the invitation.

If Hammon participated in a FIBA-sanctioned event with the United States, such as an Olympic qualifier, she would be ineligible to naturalize as a Russian citizen.

Although she "would have been content being the water girl" for the U.S. team, Hammon said she knew in her heart that door was closed.

"Our position is that she has every right to do exactly what she did," Callan said. "In her opinion, she didn't have a shot to make our team, so she went with the Russian contract. Not every player was offered that opportunity. I know it was a difficult decision for her."

Hammon readily admits: This is not her Olympic dream. Her Olympic dream did not include a Russian uniform. It did not include public debate over her allegiance. It was never, she says, about money.

"I wish I had the opportunity. I wish I had been given the opportunity. 'Will you come play with us?' from USA Basketball, and Russia saying, 'We'll pay you $20 million to play for us.' And watch what decision I would have made. Watch. I would have loved to have been given that opportunity. That would just settle any money, any patriotic dispute."

Words can't convince a nation of her allegiance.

But you might be convinced if you saw Hammon's eyes on Monday.

Her struggle, in those minutes, was as obvious as the name across her chest.