Former Hartford Courant UConn women’s basketball beat writer Jeff Goldberg, author of Bird at the Buzzer and Unrivaled, serves as a key voice in the docuseries, “The Dynasty: UConn Huskies,” which comes out on Apple TV on Friday, Aug. 21.
He was kind enough to sit down with Swish Appeal before the global release to give his take on the series and why it is so important.
The series tells the story of UConn from the time that Geno Auriemma first took the head coaching job in Storrs in 1985. Over the four NCAA-era years before he took over, UConn went 35-74. They shared a fieldhouse with the track and field team. Goldberg says they had to put netting up to prevent the shot putters from hitting the court, and that athletes were running around the track during basketball games.
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Even Goldberg, who was born and raised in Connecticut, needed a refresher on these details from the early days, as the Huskies women’s basketball program has, of course, come a long way.
That’s why “The Dynasty” was made: to tell the full story.
Goldberg covered perhaps the most crucial years of Auriemma’s program: 2001-02 to 2005-06. He witnessed the national championship total rise from two to five. At the time he left the beat, the Huskies were neck-and-neck with the Tennessee Lady Volunteers, who had six.
Swish Appeal asked Goldberg what viewers will learn from the docuseries, his perspective on the Auriemma-Pat Summitt relationship, where Diana Taurasi ranks on his all-time UConn list, what it was like watching Sue Bird and Taurasi together in 2002, what UConn’s attitude was when they didn’t win it all and why it is so important to tell the story of women’s basketball from the beginning.
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Here are some highlights from our conversation:
On where Diana Taurasi ranks among the all-time greatest Huskies:
Alright, look … I’m obviously horrendously biased, because I got to see almost all of her games. Up close.
I grew up in Connecticut, and I was a teenager throughout the 1980s. So my hero of all sports heroes was Larry Bird. And you know (there was) the famous thing at his retirement ceremony, where Magic (Johnson)’s like, “There’ll never ever be another Larry Bird.”
Well, that’s not true—there was another Larry Bird. She didn’t wear 33; she just wore 3.
I mean (Diana) shot like Larry Bird, she had the range of Larry Bird, she had incredible passing like Larry Bird, she trash-talked like Larry Bird, and she was as clutch as any player I have ever seen. She embodied everything about him.
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And I used to goof on her, because, you know, she’s from Chino, CA, so who was her favorite player? It was Magic. And I’m like, “No no no, Larry. Your favorite player should be Larry”
So for me—and this is nothing against Maya Moore, this is nothing against Breanna Stewart, it’s nothing against Paige Bueckers, it’s nothing against Rebecca Lobo, or her teammate Sue Bird—Diana Taurasi is the greatest basketball player I ever saw. Men or women. She was just the best. And a personality to match. One of my favorite people.
On why it’s important to learn the full history of women’s basketball:
It’s what drove me to write the two books that I wrote.
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Women’s basketball—for every good reason you can think of—their focus is as forward-thinking as possible….Even now….Collegiate women’s basketball is as popular as it’s ever been, but they’re still fighting for that seat at the table….
So I don’t think they feel like they have time to kind of take a breath and take a step back and look at the history that they are creating all the time. There’s so much incredible history in the women’s game. And forget UConn—I mean you can go all the way back. Go back to Cheryl Miller, go back to that Texas team in ’86, the first team that went undefeated.
There are stories and teams that women’s basketball fans have no idea about that are as compelling as anything that they did at UConn….
There’s a tremendous history that is just waiting to be told. And hopefully this (documentary) is the start of that.
