I have seen more than a little women’s basketball.

I covered WNBA games. I traveled to Arizona to sit down with Diana Taurasi of the Phoenix Mercury. I reported on women’s college basketball games and more than a few girls prep basketball games.

I covered the U.S. women’s team in an Olympics or three.

But over the past half dozen years, without planning to do so, I pretty much checked out on women’s hoops. Much of that was about working in the UAE, where the women’s game hardly exists.

So, for a change of pace, I watched the U.S. women defeat France in the women’s semifinals at Rio 2016 tonight, their 48th consecutive victory in Olympic play.

I was not impressed.

Truth in advertising. I watched the women because nothing much was happening in track and field, and I was hoping to stay up till, oh, 4 a.m. in France, to see Usain Bolt in the 200 and Ashton Eaton in the final event of the decathlon. Alas, I lapsed into unconsciousness at about 3:20.

But I was wide awake for the women’s game … and actually fairly agitated by the low level of play.

The U.S. is supposed to be the women’s version of the Dream Team, but the Yanks played like a team that could stand some waking up with a defeat or three.

The U.S. women were awful. Fundamentally unsound, confused, erratic, sloppy, unfocused. France led early and was hanging around at halftime.

The U.S. “bigs” were particularly culpable. They didn’t box out on rebounds, they didn’t seize the ball with authority, they had trouble handling entry passes, they missed a bunch of layups. They also make for a slow and ponderous team — France outscored the U.S. in fast-break points, 12-7.

Others played a part in the ragged performance. Passes to nobody. Passes into the hands of France defenders. Low-percentage shots from two-point range. Not a single made three in the first half, which ended with the U.S. ahead by only four points — at 40-36.

Part of it might have been the absence of Sue Bird, the 35-year-old point guard, who has been the Team USA playmaker almost since the turn of the century. Bird has a knee injury and did not play a minute.

From what we saw in the first half, it seemed at least conceivable a sloppy and disjointed team could lose. Even to France.

Then the Americans were saved by Diana Taurasi.

From the opening tip, she seemed like the only U.S. player who had her wits about her.

She has long been one of the most intelligent and basketball-savvy American players. (I saw her play in high school, in Chino, California, and even then she seemed to derive more pleasure from the perfect pass than the perfect shot.)

Taurasi has supreme on-court vision — the ability to recognize what the other nine players are doing. She finds open shooters and makes crisp passes and tonight, eventually, she put enough passes into enough fumbling hands that the U.S. began making those shots around the basket.

In the second half, Taurasi for a time took matters into her own hands, making a trio of three-pointers (giving her a tournament record 28) to help break open the game and turn it into the usual U.S. rout. It ended 86-67 thanks to a 25-8, Taurasi-led eruption the third quarter.

Taurasi led all scorers with 18 points.

Let’s concede it: The U.S. women ought to dominate world basketball.

The players are products of the sprawling and competitive U.S. college-basketball system, which gives them four seasons of tuition-free coaching and competition, along with the NCAA Tournament for the best teams. The rest of the world has nothing like that sort of assembly line of talent.

They graduate into the professional ranks, whether in the WNBA or overseas, and some make quite a bit of money.

You would think that would make for a slicker and more cohesive U.S. team, rather than the messy and erratic crew I saw tonight.

They are one victory away, versus Spain on Saturday, from a sixth successive Olympic gold medal.

They ought to get it, as long as Taurasi, who like Bird is 35, is able to play. She is the team’s one player who can take on nearly any role and play pretty much any position.

But it is fairly easy to see the U.S. losing to someone, and not too far into the future, when they take the court without the two players who make it all work — Bird and, especially, Taurasi.