North Philly’s Kahleah Copper met the moment for Team USA in its thrilling victory over France

PARIS — There was this flicker of an instant within a moment Sunday, Kahleah Copper standing at the free-throw line, 3.8 seconds remaining in the gold-medal game of the Olympic women’s basketball tournament, the United States — the mighty United States, winner of seven straight golds and 60 straight Olympic games heading into tipoff at Bercy Arena against France — ahead by just two points.

A strange look came over Copper’s face. It didn’t last more than the time it takes to blink your eyes. She had just swished a clutch foul shot, and the referee was handing her the ball for her second shot. As Copper — who had learned basketball while growing up in as good a place to learn basketball as there is in the world, North Philadelphia — reached for the ball, a flare of urgency seemed to go off within her and, just as quickly, subside. Her face said, Give me the ball. Give me the ball right now. I’m ready to make this free throw. Which she did.

She said, after the United States’ 67-66 victory, that she didn’t remember what was going through her mind while she was at the line. “I was definitely locked in,” she said, and her team needed her to be — not just then but throughout the second half.

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Team USA gave up the first 10 points of the third quarter. The French never went away, never gave anyone a reason to think they would go away, and would have sent the game to overtime had Gabby Williams’ foot been behind the three-point line on her last-second shot and not on it. The Americans had to have all of Copper’s 10 points after intermission, her 12 points and five rebounds in the game, the vital layup she dropped in on a gorgeous dribble-handoff set with Breanna Stewart. They had to have everything she had to give.

“Listen, great players show up whenever their name is called,” she said. “This is a big stage. This team is full of great players. You don’t know what’s going to happen. I think the story of my career is me staying ready, the preparation meeting opportunity, and then taking off from there. I’m that player.”

For weeks, in preparing for possible scenarios in the Olympic tournament, Team USA coach Cheryl Reeve and her staff “talked about playing France long before France was our opponent,” Reeve said. “There were a couple of players: ‘We’re going to need so-and-so to be able to beat France.’ And Kahleah Copper was a player we said we’d need to beat France. We think about being in these situations, ‘What can you do for Copp?’”

Copp’s playing time had been spotty throughout the Olympics: sitting out against Belgium in the group phase, just 11 minutes against Nigeria in the quarterfinals. But Copp is 6-foot-1 and lean and quick. Copp is at her best on the move — on a fastbreak, somehow generating speed within a halfcourt set so she can get to the basket. That would be an advantage against France.

Copp also came up playing at Girard College and Prep Charter in high school and at Rutgers in college — maybe a little rougher road than some of her teammates, the only girl on the courts at 33rd and Diamond and 32nd and Berks, playing on basketball goals that were just milk crates nailed to telephone poles. Over her four years at Rutgers, the Scarlet Knights made the NCAA Tournament just once and won only one NCAA Tournament game.

A player who goes through those experiences, then forges a nine-year WNBA career, is selected to four WNBA All-Star Games, and ends up on the Olympic team has long ago learned how to handle the hard.

“‘Edgy’ is the word I think of,” Reeve, out of South Jersey and La Salle, had said about her.

In the minutes that decide a tight game, a coach wants the ball in the hands of a player with an edge. And with 1 minute, 19 seconds to go, in a timeout, Team USA was in one of those situations. A dribble-handoff with Stewart, with the best player in the world drawing so much of France’s defensive attention, would be perfect.

“Stewie, man, it looked like a quarterback the way she stuck it in her gut,” Reeve said. “She got open right where she needed to get open and got it to her. I was super-proud.

“We were the two best defensive teams in the tournament, and we both showed that. We both made it hard for each other. We had to go through some real gut-check moments. … We needed to get players off the bench who could come in and help, and that happened. It helped us find our footing.”

You could explain what Copper meant to Team USA with all the detail that Reeve used. Or you could be more succinct about Copper, as A’ja Wilson was: “That b—.” Either way works, and don’t worry: Wilson meant what she said in the best of ways.

She meant it to describe a player who is tough. A player who, amid the toughest pressure in sports — the pressure of being expected to win and finding yourself on the brink of losing — thrives. A player who wants to be on the foul line, who wants the play in the huddle to be called for her, when the survival of a dynasty is at stake. She meant it to describe the player the United States had to have Sunday. The player Kahleah Copper has always been.