If anyone wanted to doubt the toughness of WNBA players, the Seattle Storm\u2019s Jade Melbourne has something to say about that.<\/p>\n
During the second quarter of Seattle\u2019s season-opening 91-80 loss<\/a> to the Golden State Valkyries, Melbourne dove for a loose ball after knocking it away from Veronica Burton. Unfortunately for Melbourne, Burton landed right on top of her, forcing her face into the court and chipping her tooth.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Melbourne didn\u2019t stay down on the court while covering her mouth. She picked up the tooth, handed it to an athletic trainer and stayed in the game. The fourth-year guard didn\u2019t go to the bench or the locker room despite resembling Jack Hughes<\/a> during Team USA\u2019s gold medal hockey game versus Canada.<\/p>\n After chipping that tooth, Melbourne was also whistled for a personal foul on Burton for the play.<\/p>\n This is the second consecutive season<\/a> during which Melbourne has had her front tooth chipped. She lost part of the same tooth after taking an elbow to the face from the Las Vegas Aces\u2019 Chelsea Gray while playing for the Washington Mystics last year.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n However, that chipped tooth was a nastier injury for Melbourne, drawing blood and requiring stitches, which forced her to leave the game.<\/p>\n Melbourne finished Friday\u2019s matchup with 13 points, 11 in the first half, on 4-of-5 shooting (including 2-for-3 on 3-pointers). Dominique Malonga led all scorers with 21 points and grabbed eight rebounds, becoming the youngest player in WNBA history with 200 career rebounds<\/a>. Zia Cooke added 15, as the Storm lost the debut for new head coach Sonia Raman.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Janelle Salaun scored 20 for the Valkyries, opening the second season in franchise history. Burton followed with 16 and Kaitlyn Chen added 14 off the bench.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If anyone wanted to doubt the toughness of WNBA players, the Seattle Storm\u2019s Jade Melbourne has something to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[113965,203000,202998,85,46,203003,113973,18330,197275,105,202997,203001,202999,203002],"class_list":["post-432905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-chelsea-gray","tag-dominique-malonga","tag-golden-state-valkyries","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-kaitlyn-chen","tag-las-vegas-aces","tag-melbourne","tag-seattle-storm","tag-sports","tag-veronica-burton","tag-washington-mystics","tag-wnba-players","tag-zia-cooke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}