Kelsey Plum drives to the basket during women's 3x3 basketball at the Olympics.
Kelsey Plum drives to the basket during women's 3×3 basketball at the Olympics.
Andrew Nelles-USA TODAY Sports
  • Team USA's 3×3 women's basketball team won gold at the Tokyo Olympics on Wednesday.
  • Kelsey Plum earned her medal exactly a year after walking for the first time post-traumatic injury.
  • Plum – a WNBA star – tore her left Achilles tendon while playing 3×3 for Team USA in June 2019.
  • Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

In July of 2020, Kelsey Plum was just trying to relearn how to put one foot in front of the other.

Kelsey Plum.
Kelsey Plum.
Andrew Nelles-USA TODAY Sports

The No. 1 overall pick in the 2017 WNBA Draft saw her career take a dark turn in June of last year – what would have been the month before the Olympics had the games not been postponed due to COVID-19. While playing 3×3 basketball with the US women's national team, the aspiring Olympian heard a dreaded "loud pop."

"And I pretty much knew right away what had happened," she said, per USA Basketball.

She had torn her Achilles' tendon.

But 13 months after sustaining an injury considered a "kiss of death" for professional athletes, the 26-year-old was on a flight halfway across the world to compete at the Tokyo Olympics. And one year to the day after she walked for the first time following surgery, Plum won gold.

Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young pose with their gold medals at Tokyo 2020.
Kelsey Plum ibites her Olympic gold medal.
AP Photo/Jeff Roberson

"I walked for the first time this exact day last year," Plum said during a press conference after the gold medal game. "Like very first time post-surgery."

"It's just really cool," she added. "I think it's just a little bit nostalgic."

Plum and her USA 3x3 basketball teammates - fellow WNBA players Stefanie Dolson, Allisha Gray, and Jackie Young - won all but a single game en route to the first Olympic gold medal awarded in the sport. The 5-foot-8 Las Vegas Aces star averaged a team-high 6.3 points per contest throughout the seven-game stretch in Tokyo.

And while that may not seem like an impressive feat in basketball, consider that each 3x3 game lasts just 10 minutes or until the first team records 21 points. It's an achievement worth celebrating, and Plum did just that:

Read the original article on Insider