China’s leading scorer from the 2024 Olympics is going to watch this World Cup from her couch, and it has nothing to do with her knees or a beef with the federation. The United States Postal Service lost her passport. That’s the whole story, and somehow it’s still not the dumbest part.
Li Yueru led China in scoring at the 2024 Paris Olympics, averaging 17.7 points and 11 rebounds a night, including a 31-point, 15-rebound outburst against Spain that’s still the most a Chinese woman has scored in an Olympic game since 1998. China lost that one in overtime and missed the knockout round entirely, so losing Li this time isn’t some end-of-bench roster crunch. It’s China’s most important scorer, sidelined by a clerical error, days before the 2026 FIBA Women’s World Cup tips off in Berlin. International basketball has never had more TV money, more streaming deals, more full-time performance staff behind it, and the whole operation still got taken down by an envelope that never showed up.
And this wasn’t even the passport’s first trip through the system. Li’s original document had its own issue, so China requested a replacement — and the replacement is the one that vanished in transit and was never recovered, according to the Dallas Sports Journal. Li explained it herself on Instagram this week: “Unfortunately, my passport was lost in the mail and still hasn’t been found. Throughout this time, we’ve all been working hard together and exploring every possible solution, but maybe we were just a little short on luck this time.”
She added: “Sometimes, disappointment is simply part of life. I’m sad that I won’t be able to be there this time.”
Meanwhile, her own Dallas Wings locker room is headed to Berlin without her. Paige Bueckers is suiting up for Team USA at this World Cup, and Wings head coach Jose Fernandez is working the tournament as a Team USA scout. It’s a strange one to miss from the outside — her All-Star running mate will be running around Berlin in red, white and blue while Li watches from her phone in Dallas, especially with USA and China running back their 2022 World Cup final on Friday, a game China lost the first time around.
The internet noticed.
https://twitter.com/UnderdogWNBA/status/2095176509287784519
None of this is complicated by Li being an MVP-caliber force in the WNBA this season. She played a down 2026 in Dallas — 29 games, 3.3 points and 2.6 rebounds a night, still working back from a left ACL sprain she suffered last August. That line looks rough sitting next to “China’s leading scorer,” but the roles aren’t close. One’s a limited role off a WNBA bench that’s loaded elsewhere. The other is being the featured post option for her country, the same job she’s held for years; she averaged 10.1 points a game when China took silver at the 2022 World Cup, too.
China will have to find its offense somewhere else in Berlin, and Li Yueru gets to find out how that goes from her phone, waiting on a piece of mail that’s probably sitting in a bin somewhere between Dallas and nowhere. Check out the rest of our WNBA coverage while you wait with her.
