How JaVale and Pam McGee made awesome mother-son Olympic history
With Team USA’s victory over France in the men’s basketball gold-medal game Saturday at the Tokyo Olympics, JaVale McGee became an Olympic champion for the first time and made some awesome history with his mom, Pam McGee.
Pam is a Women’s Basketball Hall of Famer who helped lead USA Basketball to its first-ever gold medal in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. And now with the Denver Nuggets center’s gold medal, they’re the first American mother-son duo to win Olympic gold and the first overall to do it in Olympic basketball.
Winning any medal at the Olympics is an incredible accomplishment, but this is an extra cool achievement and moment for the McGee family.
First mother-son duo to ever do it
The McGee family basketball legacy continues! #TokyoOlympics pic.twitter.com/n5vdMeMU7Z
— On Her Turf (@OnHerTurf) August 7, 2021
But the McGees are not the first mother-son combo to win Olympic gold medals.
The only other known time this has happened was when the Soviet Union’s Valentina Rastvorova won gold in fencing at the 1960 Rome Games, and then her son, Yevgeny Grishin, won gold in water polo in 1980 in Moscow, according to the Associated Press and Olympic historian Bill Mallon.
More from the Associated Press:
“It’s an amazing feeling, man,” said [JaVale] McGee, who adds gold to his three NBA titles. “I’ve got a gold medal. My mother has a gold medal. We’re the first to do it, mother-son duo. It’s an amazing feeling. You can’t really explain it. Just knowing you’re the best in the world, amazing, man.”
Sparks alumna Pamela McGee and JaVale McGee have just become the first mother and son duo to win a gold medal for Team USA #RootedinLA pic.twitter.com/zpAqSUTktV
— Los Angeles Sparks (@LASparks) August 7, 2021
JaVale was a late addition to the U.S. men’s basketball Olympic lineup after Kevin Love withdrew about a week before the Tokyo Games began. Pam said she felt an overwhelming sense of pride when her son was added to the Olympic team and added, via The Orange County Register:
“I always tell him, “We don’t care how we got in the door – front door, back door, side door – as long as we get to the table.’” she said in a phone interview with Southern California News Group. “I got cut from several teams before the Pan American team (in 1983) and then the Olympic team. Eventually, people will recognize the work, those hours you’re putting in the gym.”
A gold medal-winning mom and son is absolutely the coolest.
And once JaVale had his Olympic gold medal, he celebrated it and his mom’s achievements with a couple great Instagram posts showing off their hardware.
He wrote in one caption:
The originator, the woman who sacrificed, the standard to live up too! LOVE YOU MA!