For the first time since 2019, the WNBA invited the top 12 prospects to a live WNBA Draft show in New York City. Many mock drafts had Stanford guard Lexie Hull projected to go in the second round. So when the Indiana Fever selected the 2021 NCAA Champion sixth overall, she wasn’t in the building.

Hull hoped she’d land in Indiana after having productive pre-Draft conversations with the team, who were looking for someone with competitiveness, someone who works hard every possession and someone who “hates to lose,” she learned.

“My entire time at Stanford, those were the things I loved to do,” Hull said to the media on May 15.

She finished her college career as a three-time Pac-12 champion and a two-time Pac-12 All-Defensive team member. Although Hull believed the Fever would be a good fit, she had no idea she’d be their sixth pick.

“I was just shocked and happy to be able to spend [the WNBA Draft] with my family,” Hull says. “It was a great moment I’ll remember forever.”

After months of WNBA experience, Hull is leaning on fellow rookies to make the best of her first professional season.

“Having five rookies on the team, I definitely love it because we’re growing and we’re going through this process together,” Hull says. Among the five rookies are first-round picks Emily Engstler and NaLyssa Smith.

As of press time, Hull has appeared in nine games for the Fever and averaged 7.6 minutes and less than 2 points per game. It is a different role than at Stanford but she knows that’s part of the process. “Every team you’re on, your role is different. I’m just trying to learn as much [as I can] along the way,” Hull says. “I think that’s something that all the rookies here are really excited about, just the growth we’ll be able to have and the impact on the game will come.”

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Photos via Getty Images.

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How do you measure legacy? More specifically, how do you measure the legacy of 15-year WNBA veteran Sylvia Fowles?

Do you measure it in championships? Fowles has two titles.

Is it in awards? She’s a two-time Finals MVP, the 2017 League MVP and a four-time Defensive Player of the Year. 

Or perhaps you measure Fowles’ legacy based on her international résumé? In that case, four Olympic Gold medals with USA Basketball sounds pretty solid. 

However, if you talk to Fowles, these are not the things that matter most. Everything Sylvia Fowles has accomplished in basketball has been to prove to herself and her close circle of family, teammates and fans that she can still ball. 

On media day, we asked Fowles’ 29-year-old Lynx teammate Damiris Dantas about playing with the legend during her last season. The Brazilian forward, who usually keeps her comments in English brief, perfectly described the true legacy of Fowles:

“I’m so happy because when [I started to play] basketball in Brazil, I see my Big Mom in here and I think, Oh my gosh, I hope one day I go to play this girl, because I watch video. I watch the games…in Brazil, and now I have good opportunity to play together. She’s so good not only in the court, outside the court. Good teammate. So for me, it’s more special to be here and play together [with] my Big Mom, Syl.” 

The 2020 Olympics were like no other. To begin, they weren’t held until 2021. The global coronavirus pandemic has impacted everything for the past two-plus years, let alone sports. Nevertheless, Team USA and athletes around the world prepared amid the unknown. For the United States, this meant a quest for five consecutive Gold medals under head coach Dawn Staley. 

Fowles averaged 5 points and 4.2 rebounds in her 62 minutes during the 2020 Summer Olympic tournament. Don’t be fooled by these numbers. They are more indicative of the depth of USA Basketball than any declining productivity on Fowles’ part. 

“Everyone knows that coming to Team USA your role pretty much changes,” the LSU alumna said last August during the Olympics. “You have to be mentally prepared, and it starts in practice, making sure you’re getting that starting five ready.”

Fowles accompanied Brittney Griner—who is currently missing the 2022 WNBA season after being, according to the US government, wrongfully detained on drug charges in Russia—as the center or true 5 position during the Tokyo Summer Olympics. The duo accounted for nearly 25 percent of USA’s 273 rebounds in six games. 

After securing her fourth Olympic Gold medal, Fowles announced she was done with her USA Basketball career. 

Stepping away from the national team was just the beginning of the end of the future Hall of Famer’s goodbyes. She’d have less autonomy regarding her exit from the WNBA and more specifically, the Minnesota Lynx, though. 

“I actually wanted no part of the finale at all. When we started talking about me coming back, I tried to express and stress to my agent and Cheryl [Reeve, GM and head coach of the Lynx] how I just wanted this thing to be smooth without the attention. And they was not going for it,” Fowles told the media in February when she announced that she’d re-signed for her 15th and final WNBA season. 

“So if I would have had my way, I think I just would have kept [it] under the radar only because I felt like this is my job. I appreciate, like, the love and the support, but I wasn’t looking for the big hoorah to say that this was my last year,” Fowles said.

The Lynx and the League have other plans. “We really want to take this entire season to celebrate Syl and the amazing person that she is,” Carley Knox, Minnesota’s president of business operations, told The New York Times in May. 

Although not what Fowles wants, this is what she deserves.

In recent years, basketball has evolved into a positionless game. At every level of men’s and women’s basketball, you find post players who have difficulty with their midrange and three-point shot—players who weren’t raised to play all over the floor. There are also post players who struggle in the paint. The same is true of guards who love to drive but struggle with turnovers. 

Two things that never goes out of style are defense and rebounding. As the shot charts for her post-position contemporaries have changed, Fowles has adjusted on the defensive side. She is the all-time leading rebounder for the WNBA. She has won championships while drawing defensive assignments against the aforementioned Griner and fellow MVPs like Breanna Stewart, A’ja Wilson and Candace Parker. 

Fowles is also the only active player shooting at a career 100 percent clip from three-point range, because she’s 1-1 from the arc. No misses! Jokes aside, Fowles has learned to contribute offensively with consistency, if not from the deep range we see as common with younger players like the Liberty’s 6-10 center Han Xu—who is 11-23 from the arc in her career, by the way. 

Fowles has eclipsed 6,000 career points (and counting), shooting nearly 60 percent from the floor and 73 percent from the foul line. Her consistency is what dreams are made of if you’re a general manager or head coach. 

Reeve believes the stat sheet doesn’t even tell the full story. 

“I think in terms of her dominance, physically, I think it starts there with her competitive drive, her passion, her will to win,” says Reeve, has coached Fowles since late in the 2015 season. “What that produces in the way of statistics and rebounding, look at where she is in double-doubles.” 

Fowles began her dominance in the post with the Chicago Sky. She earned All-Rookie honors and her first of 10 All-Defensive honors in Chicago. However, she missed most of the 2015 season as she waited for a trade. Fowles wanted out of Chicago, the franchise that drafted her second overall in the 2008 WNBA Draft.

Just as it looked as though she might miss the entirety of the season, the deal with the Lynx came through. Fowles averaged 15 points and 8 rebounds per game in her first 18 appearances with Minnesota. She ended the 2015 season as a WNBA champion and Finals MVP. And so continued her rise as perhaps the best center in WNBA history. 

“You know, where would she be if she [hadn’t] had a half season that was taken away from her in Chicago? The field goal percentage, just the way you have to scheme for the offensive rebounding, the defensive rebounding. So every statistical category that you can think of, Syl has dominated,” Reeve says. 

“Sylvia Fowles is a center in the truest form, and there’s not been anybody like her. And it’ll be a long time before there’s another Sylvia Fowles.”

The story could end right there. But the most consistent stat for Fowles is her infectious and joyous personality that outmeasures her 6-6, 219-pound frame. She is known off the court as Sweet Syl and if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of her hugs or smiles, you know exactly why. 

“I didn’t really truly understand the nickname Sweet Syl until I got here, because I never saw Sweet Syl when I was in a different jersey,” Lynx forward Natalie Achonwa said during Lynx media day. The Canadian has also battled against not-so-sweet Syl in international competition. 

When Achonwa arrived in Minnesota as a free agent last year, she was drawn in by Fowles’ leadership style. “The way that Sylvia plays and the dominance that she plays with is very different from her leadership,” Achonwa added. 

Fowles is described as sweet and a mother-like figure by her teammates. She is nurturing and encouraging as a teammate and part of her reason for coming back for one more year is to challenge herself to be an even better and more vocal leader. 

“I think that’s one thing that I lacked, was me being vocal. And being vocal was always a challenge for me. So I’m challenging myself to make sure I speak up as much as possible and teach as much as I can, too, while I’m here in my last year,” Fowles said during Media Day. 

If this is her last hurdle—well, that and proving she can still hoop, and even dominate, at 36 years old—Fowles won’t be disappointed. 

And neither will her fans. 

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Diamond DeShields believes her name suits her well. At 26 years old, the Chicago Sky guard has had her share of highs, lows and criticisms—most of which she’s not quite ready to discuss. 

“Honestly, if I had to sit here and talk to you about it, we would be on the phone for a few hours. So it’s been, it’s been a lot. But, for me, to just be out on the floor right now playing basketball is the most gratifying thing I could have ever experienced,” DeShields tells WSLAM. 

What she is willing to share is her basketball bucket list for the next five years:

1) Be a WNBA MVP contender

2) Be an Olympian

3) Win a WNBA Championship 

And so beins a journey to unearth the rare talent of Diamond DeShields. 

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There isn’t any particular story behind her name. Although, as the eldest daughter of Tisha and Delino DeShields Sr, it was a guarantee her first name would start with a “D.” 

“All of my siblings’ names start with the letter D, so that’s a real thing in my family.”

Delino Jr is the eldest, followed two years later by Diamond. D’Angelo, Denim and Delaney round out the other DeShields siblings. While her name may not have any special meaning for her and her family, it does evoke specific thoughts, emotions and even song lyrics. 

“I love to hear it!,” DeShields exclaims. “Just hearing the word ‘diamond,’ you hear it so often. It’s cool to have it be a reference for so many different things. I’ve embraced it, the different meanings of the word and what it can represent.”

“I think that it fits me perfectly because of all the things that a diamond has to go through. All the obstacles and the pressure and the process that it has to go through. I think that it’s very in line with my life story and all the things that have happened so far.” 

Athletes raised DeShields. Her mother was an All-American heptathlete at Tennessee and her father played 13 seasons in the MLB and is currently the Cincinnati Reds first-base coach. Sports are the family business. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine that coming from such a pedigree brings intense pressure. However, that’s not how DeShields describes it. 

Being in a home of professionals primed her for the next step, elite NCAA basketball. Playing at the University of North Carolina, DeShields won ACC Rookie of the Year and earned All-ACC First Team and ACC All-Freshman Team honors during the 2013-14 season. Wearing No. 23 in baby blue, she averaged nearly 18 ppg for the Tar Heels and helped UNC to the Elite Eight. 

Her stellar rookie season would be the last she played at UNC before transferring to her mother’s alma mater, Tennessee. DeShields was humble and gracious but also vague about her decision which left her vulnerable to criticism. She expressed she was unhappy at UNC but kept any other details to herself. 

The transfer to Tennessee cost DeShields a year of eligibility, but it was the right decision then, as she took advantage of the time to get surgery to alleviate severe pain from a stress fracture in her left shin. At Tennessee, DeShields went on to add SEC All-Tournament Team (2016), AP All-SEC Second Team (2015-16) and WBCA Honorable Mention All-American (2016-17) to her list of accomplishments before forgoing her final year of eligibility. But, once again, DeShields fielded criticism for her decision. 

DeShields told ESPNW she was “content with every decision that I have made. I know my heart, and I never done wrong by nobody.” 

She said goodbye to what she called a mediocre college career and went to Turkey to get her first taste of professional women’s basketball. By the middle of her next professional season, DeShields was in New York City for the 2018 WNBA Draft, where the Chicago Sky selected her third overall. 

DeShields shone brightly in her rookie season, averaging 14.4 ppg and 4.9 rpg and making the All-Rookie Team. She followed that year with a standout season, averaging a career-high 16.2 ppg and bringing down 5.5 rpg while starting all 34 games. She garnered her first All-Star bid and capped off the weekend by winning the All-Star Skills Competition. And best of all, she helped the Sky snag their first playoff berth since 2016. 

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As was the case for many people, 2020 deflated DeShields progress toward her three goals. To boot, her departure from the Bradenton wubble again sparked a conversation about her fitness, dedication and the like. So the “bullshit,” as Diamond calls it, had some impact on her, but she’s still not ready to reveal to what extent. Not entirely, not yet. 

“I have a story, and I’m waiting on a moment. I’m waiting on a moment to tell it when I feel comfortable. But for right now, it’s still being written out. So I’m very much still in the process.”

As of this writing, DeShields has started all 22 games for the Sky after playing in only 13 games last season coming off the bench. 

“I think her level of intensity has been at an all-time high…She’s probably not at 100 percent, but she’s close to it,” Sky head coach James Wade told the media on August 13. “She’ll find a rhythm, and you’ll continue to see growth in her as time goes on.” 

Halfway through the 2021 season, DeShields is inching closer to her 2019 stat line. But how close is her best compared to this season’s MVP pace?

If we look at the last three WNBA MVPs—A’ja Wilson, Elena Delle Donne and Breanna Stewart—DeShields is a few percentage points off their MVP season numbers. Wilson averaged 20.5 points last season, about 4 more than DeShields in 2019 (16.2). Additionally, the three most recent MVPs shot at least 46 percent from the floor; DeShields is currently averaging 40 percent. 

Achieving WNBA MVP has historically meant a trip to the Olympics. DeShields has won Gold medals with USA Basketball on multiple occasions, including the 2019 FIBA AmeriCup, 2015 World University Games and the 2012 FIBA 3×3 U18 World Cup. All signs point to her being on track to make an Olympic roster sooner than later. 

While the omission of former WNBA MVP Nneka Ogwumike called into question the transparency of the USAB selections system, DeShields says she knows where she stands. 

“I heard a lot of good things about my chances as far as being on this past team. Obviously, it didn’t happen. But I get good feedback from all the coaches, so I plan on doing everything that I can to put myself in a position to have it be so obvious that you need to have me on that team, that you can’t deny having me.”

DeShields’ third and final goal is to win a WNBA championship. The Chicago Sky hasn’t reached the conference semifinals since 2016, and therefore never since the new playoff format was introduced in 2017. In two postseason appearances, DeShields and the Sky are 0-2. However, with every year, the team grows more experienced, and experience matters in the WNBA. 

Take this season. The Chicago Sky were 1-7 while former MVP and two-time WNBA champion Candace Parker was sidelined with an ankle sprain. Then, in their final 10 games before the Olympic break, the Sky went 7-3, including a franchise-best seven straight wins in June. 

Parker is a huge help, but DeShields quickly mentions other veterans like backcourt duo Allie Quigley and Courtney Vandersloot. 

“Candace is an extra emphasis on, like, the little things, and the mindset and competing. But we have veterans on our team, and I don’t think they get enough credit for what they do and the way that they lead us. Honestly, part of the reason why I am who I am in the League right now is because of Sloot and Allie.” 

She’s leaning into the journey. “I’m doing all the right things. So, it’s only a matter of time. What does Joel Embiid say? Trust the process. I live by that. Trust the work, and the results will come.”

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The Chicago Sky sit in sixth place as we went to press, good enough for a first-round bye but not good enough to skip single-elimination altogether. That doesn’t matter much for DeShields. After being on the brink two years in a row, she sees no reason Chicago can’t find their way to a playoff series.

“We just have to believe in each other, trust in each other, trust in James, trust the system, trust the schemes. I don’t see why we couldn’t. I don’t see why not.”

DeShields believes that all of her goals can be achieved in the next five years. After that, we shall see where the universe takes her. She’s shown an interest in fashion, is a spokesperson of affordable eye care in partnership with Oakley and feels strongly about athletes developing multiple streams of income. Her days of playing overseas are coming to an end. Instead, DeShields will focus her offseason on real estate. 

“I’m like a month or two out from obtaining my real estate license in the state of Illinois. Real estate is something that I enjoy, whether it is as an agent, broker, or as an investor. 

“I don’t want to be one of those players that’s like, Oh, shit, like, what do I do now? But, you know, because you see it, you see it so many times, you know? I want to be smart about my money, smart about what I’m doing with it, where I’m putting it, where I’m investing.”

These next five years, on and off the court, are all about adding value to her legacy. So we asked again. What does her name mean? How does DeShields embody the rare beauty of a diamond? 

“You know, I think that I would probably be the opposite of it,” she says. “All my life, I thought I was special. But, the reality is, when you go through life and you get humbled in some of the ways that I have, I just feel like everybody’s special. I hope that when it comes time for me to tell my story that I can encourage somebody. Everybody goes through pressure situations, but, I feel like there’s a diamond in all of us to be discovered, you know?”

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Portraits by Raven B. Varona. Follow Ravie B. on Instagram, @ravieb.

Action photos via Getty Images.

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