WOMEN OF THE WNBA We are professionals who play with passion, the best in the world at what we do.

We are the children of Title IX. We are Team USA and Olympians of many nations playing for America’s home towns.

We are hip-hop and country, lesbian and straight. We are entrepreneurs and cancer survivors, single mothers and soldiers’ wives. We are fashion designers and philanthropists.

WHO WE ARE We are colorful characters of every color, and living proof that grace and guts come in every shape and size.

We are here to show the world what is possible— what women can be as athletes and what athletes can be as citizens.

We are 132 women with 132 stories, united by our relentless drive to win. DAD’S DRIVEWAY

SEEKING THE HIGHEST LEVEL

WHAT DISABILITY?

“ASTOUNDING WOMAN”

THE COMMITMENT TINA CHARLES

SKINNY KID

WHAT HEART LOOKS LIKE

WARRIOR

DID YOU SEE THAT? ANGEL MCCOUGHTRY

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

NINE MONTHS

MAKING A STATEMENT

THE FORCE

COMING HOME SEIMONEAUGUSTUS

She was a tomboy growing up, and you still see some of that in the way she needles people she likes, and in her game: herky-jerky moves with a smooth-as-silk shot. Seimone and her dad used to restore old Chevy Impalas in the driveway, and that’s where he taught her . We set They’d drill into the night, sometimes using a bowling ball to strengthen such a her shot. In the WNBA, her shooting percentage is one of the highest in the league. Now her dad has MS, and she lends him the strength that high he once poured into her.

standard ‘Mone has played from Moscow to Minneapolis, but Baton Rouge is for our- home. She was born there, raised there, and starred at LSU, where she selves. was the first female athlete to have her jersey retired. In her first years as a pro, only the true basketball junkies knew how good she was. Knee surgery knocked her out in 2009. The next year it was fibroid tumors.

In 2011, Augustus came back farther than she’d fallen. Leaner, stronger and more focused, she got better with every game, delivering a transcendent performance in the championship series. When she was named the most valuable player, basketball insiders—and her father— just nodded their heads. They’d known she was that good all along.

2011 WNBA Finals MVP. Gold medalist. First female athlete at Louisiana State University to have jersey retired. Has a love affair with 1960s Chevy Impalas. Honor student. NAACP Community Service Award winner. SUEBIRD

When Sue Bird played high school basketball in suburban Syosset, New York, she ran out of competition and moved into New York City to test herself against the best. She’s been playing at the highest level ever since. Because a guard’s role is to orchestrate the offense, Bird’s There’s success is team success. She is one of only seven women who have nothing won an NCAA championship, a gold medal, and a WNBA championship. All of which she’s done twice. better Bird is what coaches call a money shooter. For most of the game she than looks to pass off to others, but watch who gets the ball for the Seattle winning. Storm or Team USA when the game is in the balance. Fans see her as the definitive and she's been elected to every WNBA All-Star team since she's been in the league.

She may be the most seasoned professional in a global game. Bird holds dual US-Israeli citizenship and in the WNBA’s off-season she plays for Spartak in Moscow, where she’s won the EuroLeague women’s championship. Naturally.

Two-time WNBA champion. Seven-time WNBA All-Star. Second all- time leader. College Player of the Year. Two-time NCAA champion. ESPY winner. Gave her first autograph at age 11. SWINCASH

She will tell you that she came from humble beginnings, and leave it at that. The beginning was a public housing project in McKeesport, PA, on the ragged edge of . Her mother was a teenager who named her beautiful baby Swintayla—“Astounding Woman”—in hopes that a I would glorious name would come true.

not play It has. Swin Cash found sports at the Boys and Girls Club, and poise in if I high school drama class. In college, she lived her mom’s dream: a star at , then championships with two teams in the WNBA. She’s wasn’t given her fans nearly 12,000 minutes of All-Star caliber play and covered trying sports as an analyst for ESPN and NBC.

to win. Her Cash for Kids foundation has helped children all over the US grow up fitter and aim higher. Her urban redevelopment company turns tear- downs in towns like McKeesport into homes that people from humble beginnings can afford. Swin Cash is a gold medalist, but there’s another honor that she treasures. It’s an honorary doctorate from Washington and Jefferson College—in Public Service.

Three-time WNBA champion. Four-time WNBA All-Star. Gold medalist.. WNBA Community Assist Award winner. Girl Scout. Former president of McKeesport (PA) High School Student Council. TAMIKACATCHINGS

People who follow women’s professional basketball will tell you Tamika Catchings is the greatest defensive player ever. Fathers bring their kids —girls and boys—to see her because her intensity on the floor is a living lesson in how to compete. I make People who know her personally will tell you she’s one of the WNBA’s sure great souls. Tamika’s hearing began to fail when she was in school. The they are hearing aids made her a target for teasing. She was funny looking and funny sounding. It got so bad she threw the damn things away. She took going to out her anger—and found sanctuary—on the basketball court. She was remember still different, but she was good at something. Very, very good.

number Years later, , the great Tennessee coach, told her to wear 24. her hearing aids proudly. Now Catchings is supporting her mentor’s fight against early-onset dementia—and passing mentorship along. Her Catch the Stars foundation organizes programs that motivate kids from all walks of life to dream bigger and achieve more. Just like she did.

Basketball is in Catchings’ DNA. She’s the daughter of an NBA player, and now a bigger star. In 2011 she was voted the WNBA Most Valuable Player. People who know her cried when they heard the news.

2011 WNBA MVP. Seven-time WNBA All-Star. All-time WNBA steals leader. Two-time gold medalist. Finalist for the NGO Positive Peace Award. President of the WNBA Players Association. Poet. TINACHARLES

Tina Charles could always be better. That’s a scary thought for the players who face her under the basket, and for years it was a challenge for the lady herself. When you’re better than just about anyone else, how do you find out how good you can be? …and There were astonishing performances in college that still left room this is for improvement. A moment’s inattention, a missed opportunity: tiny only the lapses that only she and Coach Auriemma could see. Fans saw the greatest scorer and greatest rebounder in UConn history. Charles saw beginning! work in progress. She has made herself one of the most consistent performers in the game, and made it look easy. It isn’t.

She is reserved, even in the locker room, and shy about the honors she has received. But watch her give a clinic to a bunch of kids. She is incandescent. Kids are all about potential. They don’t know what they can be. Tina Charles does. She knows what it is to commit utterly to becoming the best that you can be, and that it’s the journey of a lifetime.

WNBA All-Star. Season record-holder for double-doubles. Owns the record for rebounds in one season. WNBA Rookie of the Year. UConn's all-time leading scorer and rebounder. Psychology major. Back-to-back NCAA champion. College Player of the Year. SYLVIAFOWLES

To see her now it’s hard to imagine the skinny little kid running around the Victory Homes on ’s tough 74th Street. Running was in her genes. Her mother was a track star before leaving to find work and raise her family. Sylvia aimed to run like mom. When she began to When I grow and didn’t stop, it was her brothers who said Syl, you have to found pick up a basketball. basket- The brothers shooed away potential boyfriends and got her lifting weights so she’d have the strength to go with her size. Fowles stands ball, I six feet, six inches, and weighs 200 pounds, cabled with muscle. She is felt at the first, some say, of a new kind of WNBA player—an evolutionary leap home. to a league of superwomen. Fowles is an intimidating defender. She is no fun to play against, but a lot of fun to be around, especially if you're a kid. She scrunches down and charms them silly because she’s afraid of scaring them. Like many successful women, she extends a ladder down for others. In Miami, she sponsors Team Fowles, a program that teaches life skills as well as basketball. Because not every kid in the Victory Homes has brothers like hers.

2011 WNBA Defensive Player of the Year. Two-time WNBA All-Star. Gold medalist. Guitarist. Led Louisiana State University to the Final Four in each of her four years on campus. BECKYHAMMON

Becky Hammon is used to being overlooked. At five feet, six inches she’s not an imposing presence, not the fastest or the strongest. But Becky Hammon finds a way to the basket—and to any goal she sets. She was overlooked by the premier basketball schools and undrafted You have by the pros. Hammon fought for a tryout, then fought her way up to be from bench-warmer to backup to co-captain. When the team traded her away, she came up with her best year ever for the new team, internally leading the league in assists.

driven to When she was overlooked by the selection committee for the U.S. be suc- Team. Hammon found a way to play for , where she plays in cessful. the off-season. Some people had a problem with that. Imagine how she felt standing on the podium with her bronze medal next to the U.S. team that won gold.

Becky Hammon is as American as Rapid City, , where she grew up hiking, fishing, and biking through the mountains. We root for her because we love underdogs and Cinderellas, the little guys that no one can keep down because they never, ever, give up.

Voted a Top 15 Player in WNBA history—the only undrafted player on the team. Six-time WNBA All-Star. Only WNBA player ever from South Dakota. Led Russia to bronze medal. Two-time Euro-League All-Star. LAURENJACKSON

She calls herself a country girl from , but she is the highest-paid female athlete in and has won professional championships on four continents. Of only fifteen Most Valuable Player awards in WNBA history, Lauren Jackson has won three of I’m just them. There is no more dominant player in this – or any – league. about as She can score from anywhere, over anyone. crazy as Both of Jackson’s parents played for the Australian national team, and she has represented her nation in 2000, 2004 and 2008. Her anybody, three silver medals are bittersweet, the fruits of three final game but also losses to the U.S. and the women she knows so well in the WNBA. as laid- London will be her fourth try. She is thirty-one and has the accumulated injuries of a warrior. Which don’t matter much when back as you’re Lauren Jackson. People who know her expect to see her in anybody. in 2016.

Jackson is an outspoken advocate for women’s issues and a tireless campaigner against violence towards women. This is the future she sees after basketball, fighting as fiercely as she does on the court for women who can’t fight for themselves.

One of the Top 15 Players in WNBA History. Two-time WNBA champion. Three-time WNBA MVP. Eight-time WNBA All-Star. Loves to fish. At 16, became youngest Australian to join National Team. Three-time silver medalist. ANGELMCCOUGHTRY

Angel McCoughtry is one of professional basketball’s most exciting players to see in person, even if you’re Angel McCoughtry. She will sometimes speak of herself in the third person, as if even she can’t quite believe what just happened. I was McCoughtry’s mercurial personality is wired directly to sublime skills, always so what happens happens faster than any normal player could think the only it up. The result is total unpredictability that unhinges the most carefully planned offensive or defensive schemes. She will your shot, girl the ball, and score before you’ve fully registered that she’s in outside front of you.

playing. In East Baltimore, she was “the basketball girl,” spending all day on asphalt courts, returning home long after dark, the last kid out on troubled streets. By age twenty-four she’d played all over the world. If that sounds like a story worthy of a documentary film, it is. And Angel McCoughtry is making the film herself.

Led her team to WNBA Finals the last two years. Two-time WNBA All-Star. Three-time WNBA All-Defensive Team selection. Rookie of the Year. Cut A Music Video. Louisville’s all-time leading scorer and only three-time All-American. MAYAMOORE

In eight years of high school and Division I basketball—279 games— Maya Moore’s teams only lost seven times. There were years when they didn’t lose at all. As a pro she was WNBA Rookie of the Year right out of the box, and her team won its first championship ever. I always Maya Moore is an expert on winning. But, more than that, she is an want to expert on pressure. She’s been dealing with people’s outsized win. expectations since she was three and her mom nailed up a hoop outside the back door. No pressure, but …

Being Maya Moore means holding tight to the situation that’s in front of you: the player you guard, the lane to the basket, an interviewer’s question, and worrying about that and not the record books. Maya knows what she can do, and uses that knowledge to make the absolute most of a lot of ten-second opportunities. People are surprised that she’s so—normal, is how they put it. Stronger, faster, better skilled than the rest of us, maybe, but really a regular person. They have no idea.

WNBA All-Star, Rookie of the Year, and WNBA Champion—all in her first year in the league. Plays the drums. Four-time first-team All- American in college. Two-time national champion at UConn and the program’s all-time leading scorer. CANDACEPARKER

Like any working woman, Candace Parker worried about telling her employer that she’d be taking maternity leave. It was only her second year as a pro, but much was expected. Parker was the first woman to win both WNBA Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player in the I’m a same year, not to mention one of People magazine’s most beautiful tad ambi- women. Everyone said she was the future of the league, and here she was pregnant. That’s a lot of weight to carry, even when you’re six feet tious. four.

Family came first. If soldiers can be mothers, so can professional basketball players. Lailaa Nicole Williams was born in May, 2009. Being a family is a juggling act. Parker’s husband plays for the Nets. Her team’s in , and she plays during the offseason in Europe. Lailaa goes with her everywhere.

It’s work to be a star as a professional and as a mom—something Parker has in common with a lot of her fans. She comes to both jobs from a place of quiet confidence. You can’t do everything in one year, she says. But you can do everything.

First player to earn WNBA MVP and Rookie of the Year in the same season. Second player ever to dunk in a WNBA game. Two-time NCAA champion at Tennessee. Working mom. Brother Anthony plays for the . Has graced the cover of ESPN The Magazine. CAPPIEPONDEXTER

Cappie Pondexter tells you exactly what she thinks. Nothing is going to stop her saying what’s on her mind or getting off her shot. Cappie brings the playground game to the WNBA. Growing up in she challenged the boys to respect her handle—ball control—and they had I love little choice. She can do anything with a basketball. Even then she clutch knew where she was going, sure enough to tattoo the WNBA logo and “The Future” on her shoulder. situations. Before moving to New York to launch her fashion business, Pondexter won two championships in Phoenix. Diana Taurasi remembers the team had a special play for the end of tight games: “Give the ball to Cappie and get the hell out of the way.”

Like her play, Pondexter’s successful start-up, 4Seasons Style Management, is all about making a statement. The company creates high-velocity looks for individuals, celebrities and trendsetters like Elle magazine and JC Penney. But Cappie is always her own best advertisement: creative, entrepreneurial, unstoppable.

Two-time WNBA champion. Four-time WNBA All-Star. 2007 WNBA Finals MVP. Entrepreneur. Future pre-school teacher. First player in state history to twice be named . DIANATAURASI

She is brassy, bossy, hilarious and profane, utterly relentless, one of the most ferocious competitors in sport, men’s or women’s. , her coach at the University of Connecticut and on Team USA says, “Diana is all the things you don’t want to compete against, The only and everything you want in a teammate.”

thing I’m Taurasi demands the best from those who play with her and from those guilty of on the other side. “We’re playing Dee tonight” means best show no is taking weakness. Diana herself she has none. The ultimate scorer, she can too many shoot from any range. Taurasi rains points, enough to have delivered eleven major championships before turning thirty. Say she’s the best jumpshots. female player ever, and you won’t get an argument.

Up close, away from the court, the emotional temperature changes. Taurasi has a knack for making you feel like the only person in the room. Maybe it’s the Argentine-Italian heritage or the laid-back attitude of Chino, California, where she grew up. Still, there’s something else. Being around Diana you get a feeling that the normal rules—gravity, speed limits, bedtimes—are only suggestions. Diana Taurasi is happiest right on the edge, and you want to be out there with her.

Two-time WNBA champion. Five-time WNBA All-Star. MVP of 2009 WNBA regular season and Finals. Two-time gold medalist. Three- time NCAA champion. Goes by the nickname “Dee”. Owner of four ESPY awards. One of the Top 15 Players in WNBA History. LINDSAYWHALEN

When she walks into the room, Lindsay Whalen doesn’t strike you as a professional basketball player or a prankster, but she is both. On the court, there are others with flashier moves and more glittering stats. Whalen has never led the WNBA in any category except assists. It’s all And respect.

about Leadership is a hard quality to see, at first. It’s what the other four the players do that shows you how good she is. She sets the tone, gets them the ball, runs the offense. Even without the ball, Lindsay Whalen team. holds the team in her hands.

Whalen grew up in Minnesota, where she became a legend as a high school player and at the University. But through some kind of cosmic misunderstanding, she began her professional career with Connecticut. In 2010, Minnesota fans rejoiced when Lindsay Whalen came home. For everyone who believes in happy-ever-afters, she’s an inspiration. She came home to Minnesota, made a home with her college sweetheart, and brought home Minnesota’s first WNBA championship. Heck, it was the state’s first major pro championship in any sport in a generation.

WNBA champion. WNBA All-Star. First athlete in University of Minnesota history to have her own bobblehead doll. First woman to be named Minneapolis Star Tribune Sportsperson of the Year.

CAPPIEPONDEXTER

Cappie Pondexter tells you exactly what she thinks. Nothing is going to stop her saying what’s on her mind or getting off her shot. Cappie brings the playground game to the WNBA. Growing up in Chicago she challenged the boys to respect her handle—ball control—and they had I love little choice. She can do anything with a basketball. Even then she clutch knew where she was going, sure enough to tattoo the WNBA logo and “The Future” on her shoulder. situations. Before moving to New York to launch her fashion business, Pondexter won two championships in Phoenix. Diana Taurasi remembers the team had a special play for the end of tight games: “Give the ball to Cappie and get the hell out of the way.”

Like her play, Pondexter’s successful start-up, 4Seasons Style Management, is all about making a statement. The company creates high-velocity looks for individuals, celebrities and trendsetters like Elle magazine and JC Penney. But Cappie is always her own best advertisement: creative, entrepreneurial, unstoppable.

Two-time WNBA champion. Four-time WNBA All-Star. 2007 WNBA Finals MVP. Entrepreneur. Future pre-school teacher. First player in state history to twice be named Illinois Miss Basketball.