Iziane Castro Marques: Brazil basketball star cut from Olympic team
Brazilian forward Iziane Castro Marques advances to score into the Colombian area during a game at the preliminaries in the XVI Pan-American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico, on October 23, 2011.
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Iziane Castro Marques was removed from Brazil's Olympic women's basketball team Friday for violating a team rule.
Marques, who helped the Atlanta Dream reach the WNBA finals the past two seasons, allegedly broke the rules when she took her boyfriend back to the Olympic team's hotel in Lille, France, where Brazil is competing in a pre-Games tournament to warm-up, according to CRI English. Hortencia Marcari, Brazil's delegation chief, did not confirm or deny the reason for Marques' dismissal, but said the decision was final.
"I'm not going to say what the reason was. The team has rules and they were broken," Marcari told CRI.
Because Marques isn't injured, Brazil's team will have to play with 11 players in London, as its roster had already been submitted and can only be changed for injury, reported the Associated Press. Marques had 21 of Brazil's 67 points in her team's loss to the United States on Monday.
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The AP also said that this wasn't Marques' first run-in with the Brazilian basketball federation. She was also removed from Brazil's 2008 Olympic team after refusing to play overtime in a game during a pre-Olympic qualifying tournament. Brazil went on to finish 11th at the Beijing Games.
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