Q&A: Canadian basketball star Natalie Achonwa on playing in her last Olympics

Natalie Achonwa achieved something no Canadian basketball player ever had when she took the floor earlier this week in Lille, France.

The native of Guelph, Ont. became the first Canadian player – male or female – to compete in four Olympic tournaments, a run that began across the English Channel at the 2012 Games in London when she was a teenager.

The 31-year-old is expecting to retire from international basketball when these Games are over.

How long Canada will remain in the tournament remains to be determined. Despite standing at 0-2 in Group B play, a win against Nigeria on Sunday and some luck with point differentials elsewhere could see Canada – and Achonwa – advance to the quarterfinals for the third time since 2012.

A loss or the wrong set of breaks could end the nine-year WNBA veteran's time in international basketball.

In Canadian terms, her mark on the game is nearly unrivalled. Achonwa has the most assists of any female Canadian Olympian, the most  games played and the third most rebounds. 

She’s also become the mother to a son, Maverick, been outspoken and active in pushing for equitable treatment for female national team athletes and had an active role in WNBA collective bargaining. She’s made her presence felt and built a legacy that will last long beyond Sunday, regardless of the outcome against Nigeria.

Before the Olympics, I spoke with Achonwa about her Olympic journey. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity:

Sportsnet: Tell me about the first senior women’s national team camp and how it made you cry, please!

NA:  Denise [long-time Canada Basketball executive Denise Dignard] loves to tell that story! My first year with the national team I was 16 and we had a 40-day training camp in Abbotsford, B.C., and I was feeling a little homesick. But a few days before it was scheduled to end [then national team head coach], Allison McNeill told us at practice that we were going to be going home a few days earlier than scheduled. And I thought they were joking, but when I found out they weren’t I started crying [laughs]. It’s crazy to think that was literally almost 16 years ago now. [But] I think the group that first summer really embedded Canada Basketball into my heart, and they are still some of my greatest friends to this day. The best part of even thinking back on my career is the journey I've been through and that we've all been through to get where we are today.

SN: Do you find yourself telling the younger players on this team the ‘back-in-the-day’ stories?

NA: I was telling Cass [first-time Olympian Cassandre Prosper] some of them at dinner the other day. She was asking about them, and it’s crazy that we used to be the team that other countries would fly in to play for their preparation games and now here we are, going to four straight Olympics and the expectation is that we’re going to compete at world championships every time. It’s been amazing to see in itself.

SN: But you’ve seen the organization make significant strides off the court as well. 

I feel like I’m in this middle generation, where I remember an earlier time where we just used to be so thankful and grateful for everything we had, overly so. Like, we were lucky to play basketball, we were lucky to have a 40-day, 40-night training camp. We were lucky to play exhibition games and travel the world, regardless of the conditions we were playing in or how we were traveling or where we were staying. And then now, fast forward to the amazing training camp we just had in Victoria where we were staying at a resort on the water and where we've had catered meals, or being at the point where we’re flying first class to go overseas. Those things matter in terms of investing in your program, investing in the sport and our team as athletes, and it's been amazing to see the growth.

But then the second part of this middle generation I'm in is never being satisfied. I am thankful and grateful at how Canada Basketball has continued to invest in us, but I always come back and I say to [Canada Basketball chief executive officer] Mike Bartlett like, ‘what more can we do? How much can we continue to push the envelope forward?’

And I think that they know they're stuck with me for life. So as much as I've done it in a role as an athlete and part of the team, Mike knows he's stuck with me and our conversations aren’t over. It’s not for me … I think about the Syla [Swords], the Cass’s, the Yvonne’s [Ejim] and those that are going to come after us: how can we make their journey easier, so that they can continue to not have to worry about the little details and being an elite athlete so they can focus on being their best.

SN: Do you have any mementos or special memories from your first three Olympics?

Honestly, if you ask me about every single Games, most of my memories don’t have anything to do with on the court things. I could think of one if you asked me, but the first memories are always about time spent with my teammates.

SN: OK. What do you think about when I say London?

[Laughing] I’m gonna get in trouble for some of these. London? I would say there was a mall right next to the athletes' village and we would go in the mall and there was a Häagen-Dazs store, and we would go as teammates and get little Häagen-Daz cups and we’d walk around the mall and eat our ice cream.

SN: Rio?

After the games my family – the Rio Games were about my family because they couldn’t be there in London – and I were walking on the beach, they had just come from their Airbnb and I was walking with my brother and he asked, ‘if you could do it all over again, would you do anything differently?’ And I said ‘no, because the journey will always be a piece of me, and I wouldn't change it for anything’

SN: Tokyo?

NA: That was a tough one [Canada had high hopes for a medal but went 1-2 in group play and didn’t advance to the quarterfinals], but after the results were announced and we weren’t going to be moving on, we still had some practice time, so we went to the gym and dressed up in the most ridiculous outfits and we played games and ran around. I have videos with Kia [Nurse] doing an entire Beyonce performance. We enjoyed being there and being around each other. That was a really tough Games with the surroundings and with COVID, and we just went and had fun.

SN: That was the tournament where the expectations were maybe the highest?

NA: The COVID break was the most disappointing part. If we had carried the momentum that we qualified with [Canada was undefeated in qualifying] straight to Tokyo [without the one-year postponement], I think the results would have been different. I've said that London was we were happy to be there, we were the last team to qualify. The next one Rio [where Canada lost to France in the quarterfinals], I was like, ‘OK, we worked to be here, we deserve to be here’. Tokyo was where I think we suffocated our dreams just a little bit; we were ‘medal or bust’, and I think we held on too tightly.

SN: This is a team with a lot of experience but also some very young players in their first Olympics – Syla Swords just finished high school, for example, and Cassandre Prosper and Yvonne Ejim are still in university – when you look at them and think about yourself as a teenager on the national team, have you achieved what you set out to do? Could you have predicted 16 years on the national team?

If someone was predicting the career and the journey that I’ve had back then, tell them to send me some lotto numbers, because I couldn't envision this, I couldn't predict this. I had no idea that I would have been in the WNBA for nine years; that I would have been at four Olympics; that I would have been drafted; that I would have went to four Final Fours [with Notre Dame] that I would have played all over the world. I didn't predict this. I couldn't predict this.

And you know, when you were asking that question about training camp when I was 16, it made me think I should really call Allison McNeil and ask her what she thought when I was 16, because even then I was like ‘Sis, what are you seeing because I'm not seeing it’. For her to have that faith and belief in me at that point, that’s why I'm here today. So many people have helped me along the way, and they all deserve their flowers, because I'm telling you, I could never envision that this journey would lead me to here. Never in my wildest dreams, but I just put in the work and [let] God handle the rest. Because I could have never in a million years imagined I'd be where I am today.

SN: Have you thought much about this being your last Olympics?

Not really. One thing I’ve learned since having Mav is to really focus on where my feet are. Mav changes every day, there is always something new, so it just reminds me to be present in the moment and once I started playing again, that’s been my focus as well. People have been asking me to reflect on my career and I’ve been dodging the question because it’s not over yet right? I have games to play. And when the games get done I can talk about what it feels like to be retired, but I'm still playing. I'm still wearing a Canadian jersey and I'm still gonna belt the anthem until that last tip-off happens because I don't take it for granted and never have and I'm not going to start now because the end is near. I know that it is a privilege every time I put that jersey on and that means every time I put it on for practice, every time I've put a zip-up on and walk through in the airport and somebody asks me ‘are you on the national team’? That’s a privilege, and I will focus on that until the last day I’m no longer able to.