Lauren Jackson

Lauren Jackson, widely considered to be Australia’s greatest female basketball player of all time, has tasted medal success at all five Olympic Games she has competed in for the Opals.

Having won silver medals in Sydney (2000), Athens (2004) and Beijing (2008), Lauren carried the Australian flag into the London Opening Ceremony before going on to claim bronze in 2012.

Another 12 years later and Lauren Jackson was back in the fold, doing her best work as a mentoring teammate with the Opals winning bronze at Paris 2024.

Both her parents, Gary and Maree, represented Australia in basketball and Lauren took to the game at the age of four. A teenage prodigy at Murray High School, Albury, she moved to the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) in Canberra as a teenager.

She first played for the Opals in 1997 at the age of 16, and led the AIS team - composed of the country’s best 16-to-18-year-old players - to a premiership in the WNBL national professional league. She later joined Canberra’s other team, the Capitals, and led them to four titles.

When Lauren went into America’s WNBA draft in 2001, she was the no.1 draft pick taken by the Seattle Storm. At 196cm, Lauren was very effective in defence, combining her height with a good shooting percentage. After only two seasons in the league Lauren had established herself as the most valuable player in the WNBA, an award she would go on to win twice more in 2007 and 2010.

Team success followed off the back of her success, with two WNBA championships for the Seattle Storm to her name in 2004 and 2010.

In 2006 Lauren led the Opals to victory over Russia for the 2006 World Championship crown. While juggling her time between playing the WNBA and WNBL, Lauren has had success playing in Europe and Asia.

After an initial stint in Russia, she played in Korea for three years where she won the MVP for the league in 2007, the same year she was the WNBA’s defensive player of the year and league MVP.

She played with Spartak Moscow in Russia between 2007-2009 and won the championship in both 2007 and 2008. In 2011 Lauren started playing with Ros Casares in Valencia, Spain. The team won the EuroLeague Championship in the 2011-12 season.

\After the success of the London Olympics, ongoing knee injuries finally got the better of Lauren. She walked away from the WNBA as one of the best players in the competition’s history. And she retired from international basketball, missing the Rio and Tokyo Olympics.

For a couple more years, Lauren continued to play domestic basketball, in China and Spain and for three seasons with the Canberra Capitals. But in 2016, she confirmed her playing career was over.

Seven years later, with her injury problems at least partially resolved, Lauren produced one of world sport’s greatest comebacks, first with her hometown team Albury Wodonga in the NBL1, before earning a call-up to the Opals squad.

At the World Cup in 2022 in her home state of New South Wales, she helped Australia win a bronze medal, scoring 30 points as the Opals trounced Canada 95-65 in the play-off for third place.

The GOAT of Australian basketball signed with the WNBL side the Southside Flyers at the end of 2022, attracting record crowds to games she participated in.

Unfortunately, an Achilles injury and a broken foot put her out for the season. But she was not done yet. In the 2023-24 season she helped the Flyers to the championship, with a finals series win against the Perth Lynx. It was her seventh WNBL championship.

And in 2024, she was back with the Albury Wodonga Bandits – who play out of the Lauren Jackson Sports Centre – in the NBL1 East. In one game she finished with 43 points and 22 rebounds.

In February 2024, Lauren helped the Opals nail down their spot at the Paris Olympics with a thumping win over Germany at a qualifying tournament in Brazil and then announced her retirement again.

“I’m done ... I love Brazil, Brazil has been very good to me,” she said. “How fitting that I get to finish my national career with Australia in Brazil. It’s very special.”

Lauren Jackson consulted two of the most important people in her life before she agreed suit up for a fifth Olympic campaign at the age of 43, 12 years after the last one – her sons Harry and Lennon. After talking it over with them, she decided to give it one more go.

“It’s crazy,” Lauren said, reflecting on how the sport has changed in the time between London 2012 and Paris 2024.

“The game has evolved completely. It’s a very athletic game now, a very big game. There’s a lot of girls around the world my height and my sort of athleticism – which I don’t have any more."

A big factor in Lauren’s return to the Opals is that her former teammate Sandy Brondello is now her coach.

“The thing that I love most about her as my coach is that I just have innate trust in her as a coach, a teammate and a friend,” she said. “I think that the culture she has built in this team over the last couple of years is remarkable. To be honest, it didn’t feel like this when I was playing years and years ago.

“It’s a really tight-knit group and she’s created something this special from the top. It’s her personality and who she is.

“As a teammate, we had some great times together, but she was always a little bit older than me and always mentoring and supporting me. And now it’s the same.”

At the Paris 2024 Olympics Lauren joined Andrew Gaze, Patty Mills and Joe Ingles in history as the only five-time Australian basketball Olympians.

The Opals recovered from a first up loss to a physical Nigeria team (75-62) to beat Canada (70-65) and the host nation France (79-72), which meant they automatically progressed to the knockout rounds.

A big win over Serbia in the quarter-finals (85-67) put them in a semis showdown against the USA, with the Americans' victory (85-64) sending the Opals to the bronze medal match against Belgium.

The Opals won the match 85-81 for the team's first Olympic medal since London 2012.