The adrenaline was still there. The joy was still there. And lo and behold, the shot was still there, arcing over and over from Elena Delle Donne\u2019s fingertips to the bottom of the net. With the familiar butterflies running through her and her senses reengaged \u2014 the tacky grip of the basketball, the cacophony of the crowd, the sharp-edged geometry of the court \u2014 it was only natural that a voice in her head would cut through the chaos of WNBA\u2019s All-Star Weekend and whisper: \u201cYou could still have this.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was July 24, and Delle Donne, who last played for the Washington Mystics in 2023 and officially retired in 2024, had just teamed with former Mystics teammate Shakira Austin and high school phenom Jezelle \u201cGG\u201d Banks at Chicago\u2019s Wintrust Arena to win the WNBA Shooting Stars competition \u2014 a contest bringing together a retired legend, a current player and a prospect from each city in the league. All anybody wanted to know, including the voice in Delle Donne\u2019s own head, was whether she might consider a comeback.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will always be a spot for her on the court in Washington if she wants it!\u201d Mystics owner Ted Leonsis posted on X.<\/p>\n
It was \u2014 and remains \u2014 a tantalizing thought. As the 2026 Mystics, those youthful, exuberant upstarts, prepare to open the WNBA playoffs against Atlanta, the centerpiece of their last great team, the 2019 league champions, has reemerged into the public spotlight after several years spent largely out of view. She had no choice: This summer alone, aside from the nationally televised Shooting Stars victory, Delle Donne was inducted into no fewer than three halls of fame.<\/p>\n
All other things being equal, Delle Donne would rather be getting ready for another deep playoff run than writing hall of fame speeches and being asked about her legacy. A few weeks past her 37th birthday, Delle Donne wouldn\u2019t even be the oldest player in the WNBA this season \u2014 that would be 39-year-old Alysha Clark of the Dallas Wings \u2014 a reality that only dials up the pull the game still exerts on her.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the rest of my life, I\u2019m going to consider playing,\u201d she told The Washington Sun. \u201cIt\u2019s such a part of you. To have the crowd behind you, to go out and win a championship \u2014 those things are so exciting and fun. Of course, you think about it: Do I still have it? Could I push through everything? So yeah, you question it. It\u2019s only human.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the reality is, when the next day you wake up and it\u2019s, \u2018Ugh, my back,\u2019 and I\u2019ve got a kink in my neck from sleeping on it wrong \u2013 that\u2019s when you get brought back to reality. I certainly wish I could still be playing. I feel like skills-wise, I still have it. It\u2019s just that my body doesn\u2019t have it.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so, when the Mystics take the floor for their playoff opener, Delle Donne, a special adviser to Monumental Basketball (the Mystics\u2019 parent company), will remain behind the scenes. While her role, by design, is largely undefined, encompassing elements of scouting, coaching and executive strategizing, she thinks of herself mostly as a liaison between the coaching staff and the Mystics\u2019 players, who collectively make up the youngest roster in the league. Two of those players are her former teammates: Austin, whose first two seasons with the Mystics, 2022 and 2023, were Delle Donne\u2019s last two, and guard Betnijah Laney-Hamilton, with whom she played two seasons in Chicago.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou get to see what the front office goes through. You get to work with the coaching staff,\u201d Delle Donne said of her Monumental gig. \u201cBut my favorite part is going to practice and interacting with the players and staff \u2014 seeing that growth over the course of a season and trying to give each player a piece of something to help them in life or on the court, whatever that might be.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are few obvious parallels between the veteran-laden Mystics team that won the title in 2019 and the youthful upstarts of 2026, but Delle Donne has taken note of an important one:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe love for each other,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s how we were [in 2019], and more than anything else, that\u2019s what I see in this team: the selflessness and the caring about the person next to you. It means way more than any individual accolade anyone gets.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018There\u2019s Other Life to Be Had\u2019<\/p>\n
The 2019 Mystics season was the high-water mark of Delle Donne\u2019s dazzling career, culminating in not only her second MVP award but her one and only championship. She became the first WNBA player in history to shoot better than 50% on field goals, 40% on three-pointers and 90% on free throws. (Her career free-throw success rate of 93.7% remains the best in history by anyone in either the WNBA or NBA.)<\/p>\n
But she also spent much of that season in excruciating pain from a back injury that required three surgeries to repair herniated discs after the season ended, while also dealing with lingering effects from Lyme disease, which has afflicted her since childhood, requiring a daily regimen of 50 pills and supplements to counteract it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank God we won a championship,\u201d she said of those 2019 Mystics, \u201cbecause I put my back on the line for that one.\u201d<\/p>\n
She would play three more seasons \u2014 opting out of the 2020 \u201cbubble\u201d season during the pandemic \u2014 then went more or less off the grid, disappearing into family life (she married her partner, Amanda Clifton, in 2017) and eventually finding behind-the-scenes roles within the game, both with Monumental and with USA Basketball as the managing director of the women\u2019s 3×3 National Team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be a player who hung around until the wheels literally fell off,\u201d she said. \u201cI know there\u2019s other life to be had. Who knows? Hopefully there are kids down the road. I want to be able to play with them and not be in constant pain. I had done all I could [as a player] in the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n
She might have stayed out of the public eye forever if it weren\u2019t for the various halls of fame lining up to bestow a measure of immortality upon her this summer. It started on June 27 with the Women\u2019s Basketball Hall of Fame in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she was inducted as part of a class that also included fellow WNBA legend Candace Parker, broadcaster Doris Burke and longtime Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve.<\/p>\n
Next up, on Aug. 15, was the big one: the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, where her induction class included Parker, fellow Mystics standout Chamique Holdsclaw and longtime NBA player and championship-winning coach Doc Rivers.<\/p>\n
By the time the D.C. Sports Hall of Fame called and told Delle Donne she would be inducted on Aug. 30 \u2014 along with NFL linebacker London Fletcher and basketball standout turned coach Tommy Amaker, among others \u2014 it was starting to feel a little ridiculous.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d call my family and be like, \u2018Hey, we have another hall of fame,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re like, \u2018Wait, what\u2019s this one?\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018I didn\u2019t realize there were this many either. But hey, we\u2019re doing it.\u2019… I\u2019ve never been one to talk much about myself. But you kind of have to when you\u2019re going into the Hall of Fame. I definitely tried to make my speeches about the bigger lessons I learned by playing sports.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018They\u2019re Getting What They Deserve\u2019<\/p>\n
Those honors, however overwhelming when taken together, seemed like well-deserved milestones in the post-playing life of a sports legend.<\/p>\n
But in the middle of all that legacy-burnishing, Delle Donne got the call asking her to participate in the Shooting Stars competition during All-Star Weekend. At the time, she had barely picked up a basketball in three years, her on-court activity limited to occasionally guarding and rebounding for her 13-year-old niece Gia during the teen\u2019s workouts. Had that remained the full extent of her on-court participation in basketball, she would have been perfectly content.<\/p>\n
Being back on the court in Chicago, however, and back in the public spotlight, was a revelation in several ways for Delle Donne, with none more powerful than the mixture of awe and pride she felt at how huge the WNBA\u2019s All-Star extravaganza had become: a full weekend of events featuring first-class treatment for participants and massive crowds everywhere \u2014 capped by the All-Star Game itself, with nearly 20,000 spectators jammed into the arena.<\/p>\n
It was a far cry from the way she remembers All-Star Games from early in her career, which, she said, felt like \u201ca scrimmage that was just thrown together, and hopefully people will show up.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2013, Delle Donne\u2019s rookie year with the Chicago Sky, the league averaged about 7,500 fans per game, with none of the league\u2019s 12 teams averaging more than 10,000. But this year, with the WNBA having expanded to 15 teams (and with three more on the way), average attendance is 11,482, with 10 teams averaging more than 10,000, led by the Golden State Valkyries at 18,064 per game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe level of play has always been there, and it was just so hard to understand the lag of getting the media attention, getting businesses to buy in, getting eyes on our game,\u201d Delle Donne said. \u201cI knew it was the greatest product, and when people watched it, they loved it. But when I was playing, most of the time you couldn\u2019t find it on TV \u2026 It was so frustrating that it didn\u2019t have that \u2018cool\u2019 factor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got the message all the time from [league] leadership: \u2018You need to do all these things or we\u2019re folding. You have to save the game.\u2019 And it was always so frustrating to be like: \u2018Why can\u2019t our greatness on the court be enough?\u2019 And I\u2019m so glad it is enough now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Everything \u2014 the All-Star experience, the Mystics\u2019 summer surge to the playoffs, the realization that her shot was as beautiful and effective as ever \u2014 conspired to raise the volume of that voice in her head, the one telling her she could still mount a comeback.<\/p>\n
In the end, though, it was not only the back pain that kept Delle Donne from heeding that call. It was also the constant reflection on her legacy, necessitated by all those hall of fame speeches, plus her firsthand look in Chicago at what that legacy had helped achieve: a league that is exploding with growth; record attendance and television ratings; a new collective-bargaining agreement that has seen player salaries increase exponentially.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so proud of the people who came before me, the people of my era who played and are still playing, and the younger generation,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re getting what they deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe Delle Donne also deserved a taste of it. But that\u2019s what she got in Chicago. And she did it without sacrificing her health. Her balky back is quiet for the moment. Maybe someday soon, the voice in her head will be, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The adrenaline was still there. The joy was still there. And lo and behold, the shot was still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":861354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-861353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=861353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/861354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}