{"id":950505,"date":"2026-11-03T01:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T01:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/950505\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T01:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T01:36:10","slug":"opals-star-bec-allen-open-to-australian-return-after-retirement-from-wnba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/950505\/","title":{"rendered":"Opals star Bec Allen open to Australian return after retirement from WNBA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Opals Star Bec Allen has kept the door ajar for a return to Australia’s domestic women’s basketball competition after ending a glittering 11-year tenure in the WNBA.<\/p>\n

The 33-year-old’s decision to leave the top women’s basketball competition in the world has raised questions about whether she is preparing to finish her career back home in the WNBL.<\/p>\n

“It’s something that I’m not saying a hard no on. Right now the answer is no, purely because my body just needs rest,” Allen told AAP.<\/p>\n

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“After a year, maybe I’ll get a call from Cheryl [Chambers] or a good friend like that, and I’ll jump back in and play in Geelong or something like that.<\/p>\n

“I just know that I want to be in Melbourne.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I want to be in Australia and you can’t say a hard no to anything.”<\/p>\n

Allen has a sparkling history in Australia’s top domestic league, debuting with the Dandenong Rangers in the 2010-2011 campaign and playing in the competition until 2016.<\/p>\n

She claimed the league’s Defensive Player of the Year award in 2014, before signing her first WNBA contract with the New York Liberty in 2015.<\/p>\n

The WNBL’s chief operations officer, Justin Nelson, said he had no doubt some clubs had inquired about securing her signature.<\/p>\n

“Bec is an incredible role model, an incredible athlete. She’s done so much for girls and women in basketball,” he told AAP.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Bec Allen was a member of the Opals squad at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. (Getty Images: Ethan Miller)<\/p>\n

“All of the fans around Australia would love nothing better than to see her playing in the WNBL, and if the league or I can do anything to help make that happen, we’d love to see Bec playing.”<\/p>\n

Allen has plans to become a player agent and pursue commentary, but the Tokyo Olympian is currently relishing in some much-deserved rest, having represented the Connecticut Sun, Phoenix Mercury and Chicago Sky before coming back to New York for one final season in 2026.<\/p>\n

Reuniting with her past team proved the right move as Allen won the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup in June and reached the semi-finals last month.<\/p>\n

“My first [WNBA season] was in 2015, and I had impostor syndrome at the beginning, and then I got to realise after years that, hey, I belong here,” Allen said.<\/p>\n

“I never thought that when I started, I’d play 11 years in the league.<\/p>\n

“Body, mind, heart \u2026 I’ve given the game all of myself in those capacities, and so now it’s time for the next chapter.”<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Opals Star Bec Allen has kept the door ajar for a return to Australia’s domestic women’s basketball competition…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":950506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[517411,64,63,726,517410,38556,10728,11261,66058,85,5941,69276],"class_list":["post-950505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-american-sun","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-bec-allen","tag-chicago-sky","tag-new-york-liberty","tag-opals","tag-phoenix-mercury","tag-sports","tag-wnba","tag-wnbl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=950505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/950506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=950505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=950505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=950505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}