Kahleah Copper gave everyone at the Olympics a quick lesson in North Philly history and hoops
PARIS — Nearly 275 years ago, nearly 375 miles south of Palais de sports Marcel-Cerdan, where the United States men’s and women’s basketball teams will practice throughout these Olympics, a boy was born in Bordeaux, France.
This boy would go on to lead a remarkable life. Though he lost the sight in his right eye at an early age, the affliction did not prevent him from becoming a ship captain, a daring seafarer, before he settled in Philadelphia when he was 26. There, he established himself as a merchant, a wealthy man, so wealthy that he purchased the First Bank of the United States when its charter expired. So wealthy that he was believed to be the richest man in America. So rich that — according to a history of the educational institution that bears his name — he generously underwrote the U.S. government’s funding of the War of 1812. So generous that, before he died in 1830 at age 81 after a horse and carriage trampled him as he tried to cross the intersection at 2nd and Market, he made certain to earmark much of his fortune for the building of a boarding school for poor orphans in the city.
This brief history tutorial became urgent and necessary Saturday, just before the U.S. women practiced at Marcel-Cerdan ahead of their first game of the Olympic tournament, against Japan on Monday (3 p.m., Peacock, rebroadcast at 12:30 a.m. on USA). Someone had asked Kahleah Copper about her background, and one of the first things Copper said in response was, “I don’t know if you know who Stephen Girard is.”
With that, Copper — once a star at Girard College, Prep Charter, and Rutgers, a four-time All-Star over her nine-year career in the WNBA, a shooting guard on what might be the most dominant Olympic team of the last quarter-century — introduced the international media to North Philadelphia.
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