{"id":614338,"date":"2026-04-19T11:32:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T11:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/614338\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T11:32:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T11:32:17","slug":"wnba-former-fever-kyra-lambert-discusses-w-debut-basketball-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/614338\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA: Former Fever Kyra Lambert discusses W debut, basketball journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over two years ago, Kyra Lambert took the time to talk to Swish Appeal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since then, she has achieved two significant personal milestones.<\/p>\n

First, August 14, 2025, Lambert signed a 7-day hardship contract with the Indiana Fever\u2014her first WNBA contract.<\/p>\n

Three days later, on August 17, the 5-foot-9 point guard who started 104 games across her three college seasons at Duke and one at Texas, officially made her WNBA debut, with her five seconds of action allowing her to claim that she is a WNBA player.<\/p>\n

Then, approximately one month later, Lambert became a naturalized member of the Slovakian National Team, joining the team for 2027 Women\u2019s EuroBasket Qualifiers.<\/p>\n

Through six qualifying games, Slovakia currently sits in second place in Group C with a 4-2 record. The team has advanced to the second round of qualifying games, which begins in November. In qualifying action, Lambert has averaged over 21 minutes per game, with 8.5 points, 3.8 rebounds and 2.0 assists. In a big win over Romania, she scored 15 points, tossed six assists and nabbed five steals, with Slovakia outscoring Romania by 23 points in her minutes, the second-best mark on the team.<\/p>\n

Lambert most recently played for Basket Lattes Montpellier (BLMA), which competed in EuroCup Women and reached the semifinals. Among her BLMA teammates was recent WNBA first-round draft pick Nell Angloma, now a Connecticut Sun. Lambert played nearly 30 minutes per game for BLMA, averaging almost seven points and nearly three boards.<\/p>\n

Still in Montpellier, France, Lambert was kind enough to allow Swish Appeal to catch up with her about all her basketball activity.<\/p>\n

In addition to her recent achievements and experiences, we chatted about the 2026 Final Four, life as a top-10 recruit in women\u2019s basketball\u2019s pre-social media era and more. Here some highlights from our interview:<\/p>\n

On how she got signed by the Indiana Fever:<\/p>\n

Glory to God, because I have had a very untraditional path to the W. I graduated college, I wasn\u2019t drafted, I came overseas and got to work. And each year I was hoping to get a call.<\/p>\n

And last year during the summer\u2014same summer I usually have, so staying in shape and getting prepared to go back overseas in San Antonio\u2014my agent sent me a message. He said, \u201cHey, I\u2019ve put your name down with Indiana, they\u2019re down with point guards.\u201d<\/p>\n

So I was just hoping to get a call from the team and the team called and 24 hours later I was in Indianapolis.<\/p>\n

On how she got to play for Slovakia:<\/p>\n

Credit to my agent, he is phenomenal. He got me the passport for the Slovakian national team. I had to go through the clearance, police stuff, submitting my criminal record, a lot of documentation, a lot of back and forth going from Athens, where I was at the time, to Slovakia for different appointments.<\/p>\n

In September of 2025, I officially got the passport. It\u2019s a great opportunity, a great country that I\u2019ve played in before. The people in the federation and the team were amazing. It\u2019s an awesome opportunity, plus now I\u2019m European, so that opens a lot of doors for me.<\/p>\n

A special thank you to Lorenzo Gallotti of Two Points Agency<\/a> for arranging the interview.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over two years ago, Kyra Lambert took the time to talk to Swish Appeal. Since then, she has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,118824,82,630,230933],"class_list":{"0":"post-614338","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fiba-world","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-wnba","13":"tag-wnba-interviews"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}