As 2022 winds down, Sports Illustrated is looking back at the themes and teams, story lines and through lines that shaped the year.
Tumult is a good way to describe 2022 in the women’s basketball landscape. Triumph also comes to mind. The biggest stories in the sport touched at least one or the other.
Mercury and Team USA star Brittney Griner’s detention in Russia rightfully loomed large over everything else happening not just in women’s basketball, but in sports as a whole, as Sports Illustrated’s Wilton Jackson wrote. Athletes across teams and leagues spoke up in support of Griner. Many events featured campaigns where fans could write letters to send to her. In a marquee November matchup between the No. 1 and No. 2 college teams, legendary coaches Dawn Staley of South Carolina (last season’s NCAA tourney winner) and Tara VanDerveer of Stanford wore identical shirts honoring Griner. Finally, in December, President Joe Biden announced she was coming home.
As we approach year’s end, women’s basketball players can finally focus on, well, basketball. We’re looking toward Athletes Unlimited’s second season, the NCAA tournament, the WNBA draft and then the next pro season. Athletes Unlimited is a triumph. The team-less league captained by different players every week and headlined by Mystics star Natasha Cloud showed that there might be a (less lucrative) path forward for WNBA-caliber players who don’t want to spend their offseasons overseas—especially in light of Griner’s predicament.
The Dream’s AD got more comfortable expressing themself while also experiencing a tumultuous long-COVID journey, as SI’s Ben Pickman chronicled, before bouncing back and ultimately logging a triumphant season after being traded from the Liberty. Speaking of the Dream, Pickman watched up close as guard Rhyne Howard went No. 1 to the franchise, which has been undergoing an impressive rebuild, as Jackson reported, under former player and current owner Renee Montgomery. Speaking of the Liberty, a couple of months before the season tipped off, contributor Howard Megdal dug into owner Joe Tsai and the Liberty’s use of charter planes, a violation of CBA rules—marking the biggest scandal in league history.
The W season was all Aces all along. Other teams were contenders, of course (see weather-themed teams: Sky, Sun, Storm), but 2022 was destined to be new coach Becky Hammon and superstar A’ja Wilson’s year. Their victory was triumphant—and the goofy team chemistry we were treated to along the way was ridiculously entertaining. At season’s end, we said goodbye to two giants of the game: Sylvia Fowles and Sue Bird. Luckily, we’ve got one more year (at least) coming for their peer GOATs, Diana Taurasi and Candace Parker.
As we head into the new year eager for Athletes Unlimited’s return and a possible Aliyah Boston and South Carolina repeat, catch up on a selection of SI’s best women’s basketball stories of the year behind us.—Julie Kliegman
She Wanted a Scholarship. Now She’s the Face of Women’s College Basketball. by Wilton Jackson
Aliyah Boston is a double-double machine, TikTok queen and the biggest reason South Carolina has been No. 1 in the AP poll for more than a season straight. But when she and her sister left their parents in the U.S. Virgin Islands to perfect her craft in Massachusetts, all she wanted was a chance at earning a college scholarship.
How Airplanes Became the WNBA’s Biggest Scandal by Howard Megdal
The issue of charter flights—one that frequently animates the league’s players on social media, and that led to the cancellation of a game in 2018—is simply part of a larger, more complicated tug-of-war taking place among multiple factions of WNBA ownership over the pace of the league’s growth.
How Russia Pushed the WNBA to a Crossroads by Howard Megdal
Roughly half the WNBA players also played overseas in 2022, supplementing their salaries from the WNBA—which range from a rookie minimum of $60,471 to a supermax of $228,094—with oftentimes much fatter international contracts. Typically, over the first few months of the WNBA season, players and their agents are busy lining up those overseas gigs in Australia, in Turkey, and in, yes, Ukraine and Russia. But the arrest of Griner … and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have thrown the sport and its money-making ecosystem into flux. The only thing anyone is sure of, as SI learned in its interviews, is this: Everything is about to change.
Dawn Staley’s Holistic Approach Defines a Team That Couldn’t Be Stopped by Emma Baccellieri
There was no question for coach Dawn Staley, who now has two championships in the last six seasons, about what this year’s win meant to her after last year’s loss: This was the title she was supposed to win with this group of players.
The Return and Rebirth of AD by Ben Pickman
As AD’s life was stripped down to its core, and then slowly built back up, the Liberty guard also reflected on themself. For starters, they now go by AD. They do not use the terms nonbinary or transgender in relation to themself. “I don’t put a title on myself,” they say. “I just view myself as AD.”
A’ja Wilson and Becky Hammon Found Each Other at Just the Right Moment by Michael Rosenberg
Two women carried [the Aces]: a star who had to be convinced she could do anything and a coach who was always told she couldn’t.
MVP. Mama. Mortician. And More. by Ben Pickman
While stuffing stat sheets, [Sylvia] Fowles has dished out plenty of advice to both teammates and opponents. She’s additionally forged close bonds with members of the cycling community and those interested in the mortuary sciences. The countless faces of Fowles show her diverse interests and her direct impact. Says her teammate, forward Napheesa Collier: “I’ve never heard a bad word spoken against Syl before.”
Girding for the Goodbye of the Emerald City GOAT by Greg Bishop
[Sue] Bird changed women’s college basketball, with two national titles, helping turn UConn into a powerhouse. She elevated the U.S. national team, with five Olympic gold medals. She drove rampant growth in the WNBA, with four championships, 13 All-Star nods and a league-record 3,234 assists. But her deepest impression was also her most improbable, organic and direct.
It happened in Seattle. It happened to Seattle. It happened because a point God with East Coast roots decamped in 2002 to a faraway city she had hardly visited. She desired only to turn a new and fragile franchise into a perennial contender in a league promising to highlight women’s hoops.
