Elena Delle Donne had all of the tools to be one of the absolute greatest basketball player — of any gender — to ever lace up a pair of sneakers.
Delle Donne, who retired as a professional this week, was a graceful, fluid athlete blended with physicality and the will to dominate.
But if you wanted to get a greater insight into her physicality, watch a video of her from 2017 playing dodgeball.
Yep, dodgeball.
Look at her eyes, you see her concentration. Look at her wingspan, and you see the arms that allow her to shoot 3-pointers over her opponents. Look at her mechanics as she delivers a ball towards the opposing team, and she is the opposite of the pejorative, “throws like a girl.”
For the second half of the decade of the 2010s, Elena Delle Donne was the best female basketball player on the planet. She won WNBA MVP awards in 2015 and 2019, helped the Washington Mystics win the 2019 WNBA title, and helped the United States win the 2016 Olympic gold medal in Rio.
As good as she was during this period, she could have grasped money and megastardom the level of a Caitlin Clark. After an astounding prep career at Wilmington Ursuline (Del.), she committed to the University of Connecticut. But after a few days on campus, she withdrew from school to be closer to her older sister Lizzie, who was born with cerebral palsy and autism.
This was a decision which, under different circumstances, could have been seen as career suicide. Especially since Delle Donne chose to enroll at the University of Delaware to play volleyball. But it was a measure of her competitive nature and excellence that the volleyball team earned a spot in the NCAA Tournament in 2008.
Eventually, Delle Donne migrated back to basketball. She played with distinction for Delaware for four years, then became a WNBA lottery pick in 2013, where she was picked second by the Chicago Sky.
But as time went on, her health knocked her off stride. She had developed a back problem and fought through bouts with Lyme disease. Lyme kept her from playing during the 2020 Coronavirus season in “The Wubble” in Florida, and limited her to three games in 2021.
She did play in the 2022 and 2023 seasons, but opted out of the 2024 season because of her back. She has had surgery on several discs in her back, and she had to play with some limitations during the latter portion of her career, having to be held out of back-to-back contests.
Her retirement this week will send her into the next act of her career as a special advisor to the holding company for the Mystics.
I hope she is able to develop as an executive with the same kind of endeavor and success as she did in her playing career.