UNCASVILLE, Conn. (AP) — Elena Delle Donne swore she would never pick up a basketball again after quitting the sport before her freshman year of college. She was burned out and missed her family.
She regained that love a year later and it carried her to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, where she’ll be inducted Saturday as part of the Class of 2026.
“I just needed to step away and find who Elena was outside of the game and realize, you know, I can have other passions and all these other things, and not everything is on a win or a loss in the game of basketball,” Delle Donne said. “I needed that and I needed to step away to come back and find the passion again that the little girl had who was out in the backyard shooting hoops.”
Home has always been the center of Delle Donne’s world. After first enrolling at UConn, she quickly returned to her home state to play at Delaware. That allowed her to reconnect with her sister Lizzie, who is blind and deaf. They communicate through physical touch.
“When you are a sibling of someone with special needs, it’s hard to understand certain feelings that you’re going to experience in big moments in life,” Delle Donne said. “For me, when I had to say goodbye to Lizzie and go to Connecticut, it was a pain that I couldn’t describe, and just couldn’t do.”
Delle Donne laughed when describing how her sister has no idea how good she was at basketball.
“She doesn’t even know I played basketball. Like that’s greatest thing about it. It puts life in perspective,” Delle Donne said.
Delle Donne played volleyball her freshman year at Delaware wanting nothing to do with basketball. Slowly, she started to miss it and started shooting again. She played on the team as a sophomore and finished her Delaware career with over 3,000 points.
She was drafted No. 2 by Chicago in 2013 and played four seasons with the Sky before coming to Washington in 2017.
When healthy, Delle Donne was a force, winning two WNBA MVPs, making seven All-Star appearances in 10 seasons and helping the Mystics win the league championship in 2019. Delle Donne was instrumental in the title run despite playing with three herniated disks in her back and Lyme disease.
Her career ended 2023 when her injuries and ailments became too much to handle.
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